Two examinations confirm Poltava journalist received death threats, but the prosecutors refuse to act again
"Poltava Wave" reporter Anastasia Matsko passed a psychological and a linguistic forensic examination after receiving threats from Poltava District Council official, Serhiy Boyko, and the Poltava City Council's improvement inspection head, Maksym Malko.
Anastasia Matsko shared the examinations' findings with the IMI representative in Poltava oblast.
According to her, the linguistic examination confirmed that she heard threats and perceived them as real.
"The investigation lasted three months; during one of the meetings the investigators clearly hinted to me that the case could be closed. Then my lawyer and I contacted the prosecutor's office, talked with the regional prosecutor. And then the regional prosecutor adamantly said that my next step after the linguistic examination should be a forensic psychological examination. That is, I had to talk to an expert and get a conclusion on whether I perceived the threats as real. These two examinations complement each other," said Matsko.
The journalist filed a petition to take the examination in Sumy, not in Poltava.
"I talked with the expert for over three hours and received the conclusion last week. It unequivocally says that the meaning of the statements, in particular 'I would kill you', could not be interpreted differently. The statement was not a metaphor, the official said what he meant," said Matsko.
Anastasia Matsko says that, based on the linguistic examination, the expert conducting the forensic psychological examination found that the journalist took the threats seriously.
"The conclusion shows that I could not have been misrepresenting the reality, everything was as I described and confirmed by the witnesses. And I believed that the conclusions of the examinations would be the basis for issuing suspicion notices," said the journalist.
Anastasiya Matsko also said that the investigator summoned her and her lawyer for one more clarifying questioning at the request of the prosecutor's office.
"I was already hysterical. This was the tenth clarifying questioning. During it, they were asking me which materials Malko's threats were about," said the reporter.
The journalist says that at the interrogation she was explaining things that were, in her opinion, obvious.
"I pointed out the fact that they have been consistently ignoring me or keeping their silence. I don't understand what the prosecutor's office wants to achieve with the clarifying interrogations, they will investigate anything but the death threats. In my opinion, the prosecutor's office does not want to sign the suspicion notice," says Matsko.
The journalist believes that the prosecutor's office is accumulating evidence to close the death threats case.
"If there is no response within the appropriate time frame, we plan to write a complaint to the prosecutor's office, to complain about inaction," Anastasia Matsko decided.
As reported, Anastasia Matsko, a journalist at the online publication "Poltava Wave", has said that district council deputy, Serhiy Boyko, and the head of the welfare inspection, Maksym Malko, threatened her during the March 29 City Council session. The police opened a case for Part 2 of Article 171 ("Obstructing the legal professional work of journalists, influencing a journalist in any way with the purpose of preventing them from fulfilling their professional duties, or persecuting a journalist in connection with their legal professional work") of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Later, the journalist's lawyer, Dmytro Semekha, requested that the Poltava police reclassify the case as threats instead of obstruction. On May 29, Matsko and her lawyer filed a complaint with the Prosecutor General's Office due to the police's inaction. As of today, reports the IMI representative in Poltava, there has been no response from the prosecutors.
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