COPENHAGEN, November 26 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Danish court on Tuesday, November 26, ordered top Chechen envoy Akhmed Zakayev to remain in custody pending a ruling on his extradition to Russia on so-called “terrorism” charges, prompting broad approval from Moscow.

In a hearing held behind closed doors, the court ordered the envoy to rebel Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov to be held for a further nine days.

Prosecutors had requested a two-week extension of Zakayev’s detention, but judge Lisbeth Christensen granted only nine days, calling on the Danish justice ministry to issue a ruling on the envoy’s extradition to Russia, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Russian authorities immediately welcomed the move, saying it was one step closer to the top rebel negotiator being handed over to Moscow.

“It is good that the Danish court is taking a thorough approach to studying the materials we have provided,” the Interfax news agency quoted a top spokesman for the Russian prosecutor general's office as saying.

“This inspires hope that Zakayev will eventually be brought to justice in Russia.”

Danish authorities have given Russia until Saturday, November 30, to present its full case against the 43-year-old Zakayev, arrested late last month after addressing a controversial Chechen conference in the Danish capital.

Speaking at the opening of Tuesday’s hearing, Zakayev called for the court to sit in open session.

“All the accusations that the Russian authorities have levied against me are not only made up, but carried for the most part by the Russian media, and I have no opportunity to deny or to comment on them,” he told journalists.

“That’s why I want this hearing to be held in public, since it’s my only contact with the press,” he said, speaking through an interpreter, before Christensen ordered journalists and the public to leave the courtroom.

Moscow has accused Zakayev of involvement in a series of terrorist acts in the late 1990s, in a case which has soured relations between the two countries.

Russian authorities said 10 days ago they had handed Denmark information linking Zakayev to the kidnapping of two Orthodox priests in 1996, including one man who has denied having been abducted by Zakayev.

Denmark has already given a preliminary thumbs down to the Russian extradition request, saying it failed to provide sufficient evidence against the rebel negotiator and giving Moscow until the end of the month to produce harder evidence to support its claims against him.

The justice ministry again said last week that the extradition case did not match statutory requirements and asked Moscow to provide further documentation, citing inconsistencies in translations of Russian documents in the case.

Russia’s Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky was quoted by the Interfax news agency Tuesday as saying that Russian authorities had forwarded further evidence against Zakayaev, including material linking him to the priests’ kidnapping.

“We are continuing to assemble proof of Zakayev’s guilt and we do not exclude that in the near future we will give our Danish colleagues new material concerning Zakayev’s illegal activities,” he added.

Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin won praise Tuesday from Western investors but skepticism from Russian reporters and rights advocates after he vetoed legislation aimed at limiting news coverage in crisis situations.

The Kremlin-backed draft sailed through Russia’s two houses of parliament following last month’s Moscow theater hostage standoff, in which at least 129 civilians died.

But Putin - who came under rare but heavy media criticism for authorizing use of a knockout gas during a rescue raid responsible for most of the deaths - unexpectedly struck down the legislation Monday, November 25, even while criticizing news coverage of the incident.

Many feared the laws would further curb the limited independent reporting about the three-year war in Chechnya - a brutal guerrilla conflict which the Chechen hostage-takers demanded that Putin halt.

The media curbs may still resurface after being reworded by parliamentary committees.

Putin’s veto received a decidedly mixed response Tuesday. A group of Russian reporters accused the president of simply trying to brush up his poor image on media rights in the West, while still pushing through censorship rules in the long-term.

But some Western investors read the veto as a long-overdue show of Putin’s democratic credentials.

Putin’s veto was planned in advance, some analysts say

Monday’s veto “will help correct his image of being unfriendly to press freedom,” Christopher Granville, chief economist at the United Financial Group investment fund, one of Russia’s largest, said in a research note.

“Putin has adroitly taken this opportunity offered to him by (parliament) deputies to improve his liberal credentials alongside his better established 'law and order' record,” the investment house said.

Some Russian reporters could hardly disagree more.

“This was all orchestrated by the Kremlin to show the West that Putin backs press freedoms - and that is exactly how the story was presented by the Western media,” said Alexander Ryklin, a political correspondent with the Yezhenedelny Zhurnal weekly.

Ryklin argued that the vetoed legislation will soon come back to life -- if only in a slightly revised form - while in the mean time forcing reporters to censor themselves so as to avoid trouble from the Kremlin.

“The authorities’ problems with the media are simple: They do not need information - they need modern counter-propaganda,” renowned political commentator Leonid Radzikhovsky wrote in a column for the Vremya daily.

Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of the Soviet-era USA-Canada political research institute, agreed that the Putin veto “was planned in advance” by Kremlin media handlers.

“This was supposed to both scare journalists, and afterwards show Putin as a defender of reporters’ rights,” the analyst said.

“But in the long term, I do not think the future looks good for the media.”

Both Western and Russian media reports said Kremlin advisors attacked at least two television stations - NTV and STS - for broadcasting interviews with hostage takers and hiring lip readers to try to make out Putin’s words in silent footage of an emergency meeting during the crisis.

Both stations refused to fire the reporters involved. The media later put up a rare united front by petitioning Putin to veto the legislation last week.

The media amendments would have made it illegal to broadcast and print news “serving propaganda or justifying extremist activities, including statements of people trying to stop an anti-terrorist operation and justification of such opposition.”