(RSF/IFEX) – On 23 May 2004, Olexandre Pomytkin, aged 43, known for investigating corruption within the security forces, was arrested in Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine. He was charged with theft and fraud. On 22 May, Kostyantyn Sydorenko, aged 28, was arrested in Mukashevo, western Ukraine, while covering the city’s mayoral election for a website. On 25 […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 23 May 2004, Olexandre Pomytkin, aged 43, known for investigating corruption within the security forces, was arrested in Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine. He was charged with theft and fraud. On 22 May, Kostyantyn Sydorenko, aged 28, was arrested in Mukashevo, western Ukraine, while covering the city’s mayoral election for a website. On 25 May, he was sentenced to five days in detention for “resisting the security forces”. He has been held in solitary confinement since his arrest.
RSF has objected to police methods in the arrests of these two online journalists and cast doubt on the official reasons for their detention. “It is all the more important to look into these cases because both journalists were investigating issues that are sensitive for the authorities,” RSF said.
Regional police suspect Pomytkin of “fraudulently taking sums of money belonging to an individual”. He previously spent seven years behind bars, between 1991 and 1998, for “embezzlement of government property”. The journalist works for the online newspaper “Ukrayina kryminalna” (“Criminal Ukraine”, http://www.cripo.com.ua).
Police say they do not accept Pomytkin’s status as a journalist because he did not provide them with a press card. They are currently interviewing witnesses and alleged accomplices as part of their investigation.
Pomytkin’s colleagues attribute his arrest to the recent publication of his book entitled, “The Ukrainian Mafia”, which discusses relations between police and the criminal underworld, particularly in relation to drug trafficking.
“Ukrayina kryminalna” said the journalist had received threats when the book came out. The online publication called on Ukraine’s prosecutor-general to take personal charge of the case. The paper’s editor-in-chief, Oleh Eltsov, said thugs had assaulted him twice in the last few months.
Sydorenko was arrested after going to a police station to recover a camera that had been stolen a few days earlier. Witnesses said that a bag of explosives appeared on the ground close to him during his arrest. Police refused to comment on the case.
The journalist was covering Mukashevo’s mayoral election for http://www.hotline.com.ua, a website specialising in election monitoring in Ukraine. On 20 May, he had filmed police moving in to remove activists who had organised a sit-in in front of an official building in Uzhhorod, near Mukashevo. The activists were members of Pora, an organisation that is critical of the municipal elections process in Mukashevo.
Footage of the police intervention was broadcast on the local television station M-Studio. The footage is also being used as evidence of ill-treatment in a Pora case against the police. Sydorenko was sentenced after a trial that lasted just a few minutes. He told the hearing that he had done nothing to resist the police during his arrest.
