Hromadske journalist detained for hours by Kyiv police
Hromadske journalist Maksym Kotsiubynskyi was detained by Kyiv police on July 1 and held in custody for several hours after filming evidence of Justice Minister Olha Stefanishyna using an apartment not mentioned in her declaration, Hromadske reports.
He was taken to the police station a few hours after the filming, when the journalist had finished working and was waiting to meet his friend.
Kotsiubynskyi was released from the station a few hours later with no detention report having been drawn up.
Maksym says he was firsed approached by a policeman who asked him for his ID, claiming he were “surveying citizens”. Later, another policeman joined them, saying that he needed to do a “superficial search”. After the “superficial search”, several more policemen arrived.
“When I asked why they were doing this during a 'citizen survey,' the police officers replied that someone had told them that I was filming strategic objects, which I was not,” Maksym said.
The journalist immediately showed the police his ID and said that earlier that day he had been filming the movements of a public official. Still, he was asked to go to the police station at 12-B Prorizna St., where he had to explain himself again.
“At the station, I was asked for written consent to examine my phone. I refused and waited for a lawyer. With the supervisor officer absent, the policemen told me that they could take my phone away for a long time. I asked if this was a threat and I was told that it was a notification,” the journalist said.
According to the media outlet, the patrol police officers restricted the journalist's movements and were constantly with him despite their claims that the journalist had not been detained.
After the lawyer arrived, Maksym Kotsiubynskyi provided his explanations again and was finally released.
The patrol police said they had received a report of a suspicious person, but did not show the report to the Hromadske journalist. The law enforcers did not specify who the report came from, what “suspicious actions” were allegedly committed, and where they were supposed to have taken place. The journalist did not film anything else on that day.
The Kyiv Patrol Police explained that their decision to check the journalist was prompted by request from a passerby who saw Maksym taking pictures of the house and the cars parked nearby. According to the police, Maksym refused to show his documents for inspection.
In turn, lawyer Anastasia Burkovska said that the journalist’s official reporting cannot be grounds for his arrest, detention, or confiscation of the material he collected, processed, and prepared or the equipment used by him. This is stated in Article 17 of the Law of Ukraine “On State Support for the Media, Guarantees of Professional Activity and Social Protection of Journalists”.
“So [the policemen] should have stopped at checking the journalist’s ID. But in my opinion, there were no sufficient grounds for a superficial check. After all, according to the Law of Ukraine 'On the National Police', a police officer may stop a person for a superficial check and/or search them if there are sufficient grounds to believe that the person is carrying an prohibited or restricted item or an item that poses a threat to the life or health of such a person or others,” Burkovska explained.
Hromadske journalists asked Olha Stefanishyna’s team whether the journalist being taken to the police station could be related to the filming of her car earlier that day. They were told that they had not contacted the police.
Maksym Kotsiubynskyi was wokring on an investigation which confirmed that the Minister of Justice Olha Stefanishyna uses an apartment owned by her mother, Nadiya Kravets. There is no mention of this apartment in the official’s declaration.
On the morning of July 1, Hromadske recorded the car in which the Minister is traveling, driving out of the residential complex Lvivska Ploshcha. This car is on the Cabinet of Ministers balance sheet.
Olha Stefanishyna confirmed in a comment to Hromadske that she was temporarily using her parents’ apartment and said that the right of use would be reflected in the declaration for the relevant reporting period.
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