Journalists complained being denied to get access to information on trial

Artur Prikhno, journalist for online edition “Insider”, claimed he and his colleague were denied by the Pechersk district court in Kyiv to get access to information. Speaking to IMI he told the incident happened yeaterday, March 13th. As to him, he got to know from his own sources of information that March13th the hearing within the case of murder of combatant at Donbas Vitaliy Oleshko, known as “Sarmatian” was supposed to be held before the bar. But he was unaware of hour of sitting in the court. Nor chancellerie, neither press service or the judge accepted to inform him of it. By 11 a.m. Prikhno came to the court, other journalists waited for the sitting as well. The judge went out and replied with much of emotions she could not say whether the hearing would take place or not. Afterwards, the judge informed the journalists of the hour of hearing of the case. As to the comments provided by Ali Safarov, IMI lawyer, he esteems there were some elements of violations of norm of publicity of court proceeding as to the criminal case of public importance. Safarov referred to the article 11 “On judicial system and status of the judge” : “The holding of the court, sitting of the court and information on the proceedings examined by the court are open, except otherwise provided by the law. Noone could be limited in one’s right to get oral or written information of results of examination of the proceeding regarding his own person in the court. Any person is vested with the right to free access to holding of the court, as it is established by the law”. The second part of the article 11 of “On judicial system and status of the judge” defined “An information regarding the court that examines the case, the parties and object of the litigation, date of receivance of the claim (…) location and date of the sitting in the court, referring of the legal proceedings to one or another court has to be transparent and has to be immediately made public at the official web-site of judicial authorities of Ukraine, except otherwise is expressly provided by the law”. The stipulated exceptions are such that could cause real damage to exertion of justice, as for instance, revealing the information on protected witnesses, secrecy of adopting and so on, Safarov said. He mentioned the article 24 “On information”, that forbidens to interfere with professional activity of the journalist.