Parliament Committee calls for police guard of Road Control journalist
The photo below is from immediately after the attack
The Verkhovna Rada Committee on Freedom of Speech is to ask the Interior Minister to provide a guard for Rostyslav Shaposhnykov, one of the owners of the website Dorozhny Kontrol [Road Control] website (http://roadcontrol.org.ua/)) which monitors the work of the traffic police and breaches of drivers’ rights. It is also taking the case over the assault on him under its control.
At its meeting on Wednesday, the Committee passed a resolution to approach the Interior Minister regarding the possibility of reclassifying the criminal investigation initiated over the attack to obstruction of a journalist in the course of their work (Article 171 of the Criminal Code).
As reported, on 24 March Rostyslav Shaposhnykov was set upon while getting into his car, forced into a jeep by two men, driven outside Kyiv and beaten up. He was found lying on the road by cyclists who called an ambulance and took him to hospital.
Rostyslav told journalists that he was almost certain that the attack had been ordered by people within the Ministry of the Interior. He was convinced that it was not, as the police were suggesting, a normal robbery, and pointed out that he concerns himself solely with uncovering crimes committed by the traffic police, as well as other representatives of the authorities – the Prosecutor and court in the area of road traffic. He therefore also excluded the possibility that somebody from the outside could have had it in for him.
Rostyslav Shaposhnykov sent a letter to the Parliamentary Committee regarding the attack. At present the criminal investigation is over a violent attack.
The Deputy Head of Dorozhny Kontrol, Andriy Zhukovets told the Committee that the case had not been solved, and that they did not see the logic of investigating it without taking the journalist’s professional activities into account. He said that the investigation is very shoddy with the investigators trying to see it as merely an everyday assault, whereas Dorozhny Kontrol is believes that those who ordered the attack are from within the police force. They have asked for Rostyslav to be under guard during the investigation but this has not been heeded.
New information from Telekritika