Suffered photo-correspondent accused of beating his aggressor

According to him, neither he, nor his lawyer Lyudmila Opryshko, will not be able to talk to the police on January 23, so the meeting was postponed to January 30. The information was confirmed by Dniprovskiy police department investigator Kostyantyn Bilaniuk.

"There are lots of photos and videos of the event, and the case has not yet reached the court. The most interesting thing is that now the director of the park [who beat the journalist during a protest action – ed.] accuses me of organizing the event, and that it was me who attacked him. Now, I’m accused of an attack on a person. I’m accused only because I came to work, I worked as a journalist, and I personally suffered while shooting. Of course, I insisted that the case be brought on Art. 171 of the Criminal Code, but prosecutors did not recognize me as a journalist, though I am a member of the media trade union, and it’s not the first year that I’m in the profession”, Lazebnyk says, adding that the police brought the case on Art. 125 of the Criminal Code (causing slight bodily injuries).

On September 17, police opened a criminal investigation into the beating of Vitaliy Lazebnyk, photographer of Tochka.net online-edition. Earlier, police opened a case on Article 296 of Part 2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine - hooliganism committed by a group of persons.

On May 4, 2012 Vitaly Lazebnik was beaten by a man, probably, the director of Victory Kyiv park, when he was taking photos of a protest action against an illegal building in the park.