Nokia Accused Of "A Witch Hunt" Against Murtazin

The Nokia/mobile-review controversy continues, with Russian journalist Eldar Murtazin making an official statement on what he describes as "a witch hunt" designed to discredit him.  After finding last week that Nokia had called in the Russian authorities to retrieve any prototype devices from Murtazin, something which Nokia then claimed was in response to ignored official requests for their return, the mobile-review editor now says that he never actually had an N8 in his possession; in actual fact, he merely spent periodic hands-on time with someone else's prototype.  Therefore, he insists, there's nothing left to hand over.

In fact, Murtazin suggests, Nokia are "feeding blatantly false information through their official blog and interviews with the media" to undermine his credibility, including attempting to position him as a "blogger" rather than a "journalist" so as, he believes, "to remove any legal rights I have as a journalist in protecting my sources."  Meanwhile he blames Nokia for spreading rumors that he was also working with Samsung on an N8 rival, and using inside information to boost his consultancy profile.

As we've seen with the Apple/iPhone 4 leak drama, companies go to varying extents to prevent pre-release or unofficial information reaching the public domain.  We're reaching out to Nokia to see if they have any comment on this latest stage of the drama.