The court of Poltava gave suspended sentence to man who made violent threats to female journalist

On July 29, Oktiabrskyi district court of Poltava sentenced the Poltava resident who made violent threats against journalist of online media outlet "Poltavshchyna" Daryna Synytska to two years of prison, with suspension of the sentence by one year. 

This was reported to IMI representative in Poltavska oblast by Daryna Synytska.

With the same sentence, the court judged the resident of Poltava Andriy Kniazev guilty in crime described by part1 of Article 345-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

As the journalist told, herself and Kniazev agreed that if he apologizes in the court, he can go free. Yet, according to the journalist, because he lied to the court and avoided it, the journalist decided to follow through with the case. Now for one year Kniazev will be on probation - he will have to regularly visit local police officer for periodic registration, he may not leave the country, and also he fails and goes to prison if commits any other crimes during this year.

As IMI reported before, on November 13, 2019, police officers notified the poltava resident about him being the suspect in threatening violence to Daryna Synytska.

According to the investigation results, in May of 2017 Andriy Kniazev sent to the journalist an text message with threats of violence, and also wrote similar threats in his Facebook account.

Under the Facebook post of Kniazev, Daryna Synytska received threats with being raped and "made MIA" by Ruslan Zarubin, Vitaliy Soloniy and Danylo Plakhov. They left their calls to violence against the journalist under the post of Knizaev. Andriy Kniazev accused Daryna Synytska of disseminating personal information of the activists.

The publication that caused the threats against her in the social network was her report about events near the arc of “Hazetnyi Riad” ("Newspaper Row"). The criminal proceeding on this incident was closed three times.