Berkut detained and searched another journalist on Monday

Chief Editor of the journal Korespondent, Vitaly Sych, reported on Tuesday 14 December that he had also been detained the day before by “Berkut” officers.

This came after the scandalous treatment on Monday evening of prominent Ukrainian journalist, Mustafa Nayem, television presenter and journalist for the Ukrainska Pravda Internet publication.

Vitaliy Sych writes in his blog on the Korespondent website:

“Police officers detained me yesterday evening. On the street, right by the entrance to the office. I was standing with a colleague near his car at the parking area. A Berkut jeep drove up. Three guys got out, asked to see our documents on the pretext that maybe I was in the process of putting out a contract to kill somebody.

Since I’d done nothing wrong, I didn’t show any resistance. I showed my driving licence and said that I was a journalist working right by here. If you want, you can drop in, it’s literally 50 metres, I’ll show you my journalist ID”.

The officers did not want to go into the office, but did subject both men to a search. Vitaly Sych says that they were interested in the money in his pockets, asking how much there was, where it was from.  They seemed unimpressed by the answer that it was his money.

They asked them to open the car to search that too. “Here we objected that without the owner we shouldn’t open the car. The owner is my sister who works in the company”.

In the end, his sister came down and opened the car and boot which the Berkut officers searched. It was only after that that they let the men go.