Ukrainian journalist granted asylum in Lithuania

Journalist Anatoly Shariy has been given five-year refugee status and permission to remain permanently in the EU.  He informed Telekritika that he had received the relevant documents on Friday.

As reported, in March this year the Kyiv journalist asked for political asylum in Lithuania, asserting that he was facing persecution by law enforcement bodies in Ukraine in connection with his journalist work.

He told journalists then that he was facing two criminal prosecutions in Ukraine. One involves an incident in McDonalds when, according to him, a man attacked his wife and he shot at him from a gun with rubber bullets.  The police are charging him under the article on hooliganism (linked with the use of a firearm). Mr Shariy asserts that at the time the police considered that there was no need to initiate a criminal investigation. The decision to do so, he says, came a month later from the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs. The second criminal case dates from October 2011.  He is charged with having deliberately given a false report about a crime and manufactured evidence. The police are accusing him of fabricating an attack upon himself on 13 July. Both cases are at court level.

Anatoly Shariy maintained that the criminal prosecutions were because he had published material critical of the police.

New information from Telekritika