Fighters that beat Inter journalists in Crimea threaten to take it out on their families

Fighters beat journalists in Crimea and took away their passports. The attackers threaten that now they know the journalists’ home addresses and threaten to take it out on their families, were journalists to start talking about the incident.

The fighters captured the car with the Inter journalists — the correspondent Olena Mekhanik, Andriy Tsapliyenko and two «Inter» operators — Lysenko and Diedov. They also beat the Greek correspondent Kostas and the correspondent of the online media outlet «Russkaia Planeta» Pavel Nikulin (Russia), who are now in hospital. Currently in Sevastopol emergency hospital there is a group of seven persons – six journalists and their driver. The head of the Crimean association of freelance journalists told that they went to the territory of the military base No.2355 of the Crimean tactical group, which is located near Kozacha bay in Sevastopol. The Ukrainian military started negotiations with the occupants, the journalist were standing around them. Then two women arrived, examined the situation and started making phone calls. Shortly came many cars with big burly men, who rushed to attack the journalists. They were beating the journalists and smashing their equipment. Some of the journalists hid on the territory of the military base, and some took off on their cars. The fighters rushed after the  journalists' car, and stopped it on the road, pulled the men, including the driver, out of the car, threatened them and shot in the air, then threw them on the ground and kicked, pushed to the car's trunk, threatened to take them away in the fields and kill. They smashed all the equipment the journalists had, including phones, took away all personal IDs, passports and other documents, and personal items, and left them on the road. 

In this very confrontation, the fighters severely beat the Channel 5's producer Anton Loktionov, who was streaming from the territory of the military base, and broke his fingers.