Court revoked investigator's order to drop case on threats to journalist Oleg Baturyn

The judges of Kakhovsky municipal district court has reversed the investigator’s order to close the criminal proceedings over the threats of physical violence an elected member of the Kherson regional council made against the journalist Oleg Baturyn. The judge issued that ruling on November 11, as Oleg Baturyn reported on Facebook.

In its ruling, the court fully upheld the journalist's complaint against the decision of the investigator of the Kakhovsky department of the National Police to drop the criminal proceedings over threats against him.

According to the court's decision, the case files are to be forwarded for further investigation.

“I lodged complaint to the police on May 16, 2019, after just at the session of the Kakhovka district council (…) an elected member of the Kherson regional council from the “Opposition bloc”, candidate to the parliamentary election from “Opposition- For Life” Pavlo Filipichuk threatened to maim me and demanded I wrote stories in the way he would like it. Most pungent in that story was that Filipchuk himself came to a session of the district council in order to speak in defense of freedom of speech, demanding privatize the district council newspaper “Kakhovska Zorya”. Obviously, what this edition comes with, he likes it much more, ”the journalist said.

As IMI reported, on May 16, 2019 in Kakhovka, a deputy of the Kherson Regional Council from the Opposition Bloc, Pavel Filippchuk, threatened to physically punish an own correspondent for the newspaper Novyi Day, Oleg Baturin, and promised to “fracture his knees”.

The police entered the Unified Register of Pre-trial Investigations under Art. 345-1 Part 1 of the CCU ("Threatening or Violating Against a Journalist").

Subsequently, the police closed criminal proceedings against threats of a deputy of the Kherson regional council by physical violence to journalist Oleg Baturin.

“As it became clear in court, the police did not even try to interview all witnesses to the incident. Investigators interviewed only a handful of people who "saw nothing". And they found sufficient the explanations of Pavlo Filipchuk himself saying that “journalist Baturin constantly writes lies, and as to the complaint to the police about threats, he was forced to do it by Oleksander Saltykov, who at that time was assistant to MP Serhiy Khlan. They are the persons who pay Baturin for a black PR against me, ”Baturin wrote on Facebook.

“In addition, it became obvious in court that the police had been investigating the case on my claim with gross violations of the procedural code. The prosecutor's office sustained the police, ”Baturin added.