THE PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE INTERROGATED EDITOR OF “ANTENNA” VALERIY VOROTNIK ON THE CASE OF ANTI-PRESIDENT PUBLICATIONS

8 April, the institute of mass information (IMI), Kyiv

Last week the prosecutor’s office of the Cherkassy oblast seized the issues of the Cherkassy newspaper “Antenna” for November and December 2002. The issues contained the publications mentioned in the special errand of the General Prosecutor’s office of Ukraine. These were several articles reprinted from the newspaper “Grani-plus” written by Tetiana Korobova and one article by a journalist of “Antenna”.

Editor-in-chief of “Antenna” Valeriy Vorotnik also informed that on 31 March he was summoned to the oblast prosecutor’s office. He was interrogated as a witness on the case started by the General Prosecutor’s office after the facts of publication in mass media, brochures and other editions of the materials aimed to impede the fulfillment of service duties and the detriment to the authority of the Ukrainian President and having the insulting and slanderous character.

Vorotnik turned the attention to the fact that the prosecutor’s office seized the publications of “Antenna”, which were mentioned in the “monitoring” of the Ukrainian press. The “monitoring” was sent by Sergey Vasilyev, the head of the main directorate of the informational policy of the Presidential Administration, to Hanna Severinsen, the speaker of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, “as a confirmation that the wide pluralism of opinions exists in the Ukrainian mass media”.

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Our Cherkassy correspondent Petro Sushko informs that the investigation activities were carried out in Cherkassy in the connection with the criminal case on the publications in the weekly “Antenna” (the article “The President is disturbed by Jews only”) and the newspaper “Cherkasska Pravda” (the organ of the oblast organization of the Communist Party of Ukraine). The law-enforcing organs did not conduct searches in the editorial boards of these editions, but the oblast prosecutor’s office expressed the wish to possess the materials concerned with the case. On 31 March the prosecutor’s office of the Cherkassy oblast seized the issues of the newspaper “Antenna” for November and December 2002 containing the publications mentioned in the special errand of the General Prosecutor’s office of Ukraine. These were several articles reprinted from the newspaper “Grani-plus” and one article by a journalist of “Antenna”. Editor of “Antenna” Valeriy Vorotnik was also interrogated.