Appeal court denied GPO to get access to e-mails of Novoe Vremya’s journalist

On 1st of March, the Appeal court in Kyiv has partly allowed the claim filed by the Novoe Vremya’s editorial board and denied the General Prosecutor’s Office to get access to the electronic mails and documents of the journalist Ivan Verstyuk. The journalist told it IMI. Ivan Verstyuk added the ruling of the court is not appealable. “The appeal court has partly allowed the appeal, but it allowed its essential part, the judges banned the GPO to get access to my electronic mail, to my correspondence with the editors. This is very important. But besides, we have to provide the documents related to my labour relations with the Novoe Vremya, but this is much less problem”, he said. He added the editorial board is satisfied with his decision of judges. “I want to say a very important precedent has been set as to protection of confidentiality of the anonymous source of information. As I understand, this is the very first precedent in the history of Ukraine journalism. You see, if today, a journalist provides a possibility to have recourse to poke around inside his correspondence to the prosecutors, tomorrow the prosecutors are to read the correspondence of all journalists. That is to say, this is very important precedent not only for me, for Novoe Vremya, but for the whole Ukraine media market”, Verstyuk told. “Prosecutor at the hearing found out simply not to be ready to this hearing. He was short of arguments, he had no sufficiently knowledge of the matter. And it makes sense, as I had been telling there is no way to win the war against the press. Because, if not appeal court, it will be court of review, if not court of review, so the ECHR. The journalists won’t stop when it is question to ptotect his source of information. You see, if me, journalist, I am unable to protect my source of information, so tomorrow-after-tomorrow, no one of the serious sources of information won’t communicate to me”, Verstyuk told. IMI informed earlier, the February 4th, the Pechersk district court in Kyiv provided the Prosecutor’s general office with an access to the internal documents of the editorial board of Novoe Vremya and to all materials that the journalist Ivan Verstyuk had sent to the addresses of electronic mails of the edition. The press officer for the GPO Andriy Lysenko informed the investigation officers of the public prosecutor’s office were compelled to obtain the access to the materials of the Novoe Vremya edition at the court of justice, because the holder of the information company “The Publishing house “Media-DK” declined to provide all necessarily materials to the investigation. February 19th, the Media Movement claimed to consider these measures undertaken by the GPO as the breach to the freedom of speech.