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Cherkassy weekly “Antenna” against the town directorate for fighting the organized crime

08.04.2004   

12 August 2003. The Cherkassy weekly “Antenna” won the process against the head of the Cherkassy oblast directorate for fighting the organized crime (DFOC), and the Appeal court of the Cherkassy oblast did not satisfy the complaint of Oleksandr Mikish, the DFOC head and the first deputy of the head of the oblast militia directorate. O. Mikish complained against the decision of Sosnovskiy district court, which had rejected his claim against the newspaper “Antenna”.

The conflict started in the heat of the discussion in the press of the case of militia lieutenant-general Kochegarov, who tried to commit suicide in his office. Kochegarov wrote several short letters before the suicide. In one of these letters he wrote that journalist Valentina Vasilchenko was guilty of his death, in other letter he accused a DFOC officer. These facts generated different versions (including the attempt at Kochegarov’s life), which were discussed not only in regional, but also in central mass media. The head of the Cherkassy DFOC interpreted the publications in “Antenna” as the accusation of “the unsuccessful attempt to organize the murder of Kochegarov”. O. Mikish demanded to recompense him the moral damage equivalent to 80 thousand hryvnas, but the Sosnovskiy district court refused to satisfy the claim.

(Barometr)

***

Andrey Lubenskiy:

Now, probably, the case DFOC vs. “Antenna” will be passed to the Supreme Court. Tetiana Doncheva, a deputy of the editor-in-chief of “Antenna”, communicated to a correspondent of ForUm that she had got this information from Mikish’s advocate.

Meanwhile, last week “Antenna” published the material, the author of which quoted the complaint of Cherkassy dweller N., who had been detained by the DFOC officers. In this complaint N. writes that the officers tried to make him to confess to a crime he had not fulfilled, and one of the law-enforcers beat him. On Monday the editorial board received the letter, which was signed: “Commandment of the Cherkassy oblast Directorate for fighting the organized crime”. The letter contained the gratitude to the editorial board “for critical articles about the activities of the Cherkassy oblast DFOC and the oblast militia as a whole”. Yet, the letter reads, the activities of the DFOC are elucidated by the newspaper one-sidedly. So, in the material about N.’s misadventures the newspaper adduced only the arguments of this citizen, which “are ungrounded”. At the same time, the newspaper “ignored the facts, on the ground of which the ODA had been conducted: the appeals of citizens, who turned to the DFOC complaining against the extortion of bribes by citizen N.” The author (or authors?) of the letter reckon that in that way “this publication ignored President’s Edict of 13 August 2002 No. 700/2002 “On the additional measures for guaranteeing the realization of constitutional citizens’ right for appeals””.

Tetiana Doncheva supposed that the mentioned publication would also become a subject of a claim. “We will not be surprised by that”, she said, “we are surprised by other thing: why the letter sent by such respectable agency was, in fact, anonymous?”

(«Ukrainskiy Media Server»)

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