Europe surprised

The European Court of Human Rights rejected the claim of war journalist Grigory Pasko, who was convicted in 2001 of spying for Japan. Pasko worked for the Pacific Fleet newspaper “Battle Watch” and collaborated with Japanese television and the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. The FSB decided that he was transferring classified materials about the fleet to Japan, and in 1997 accused him of treason. Pasko believes that this was persecution for political reasons, caused by his critical publications on environmental topics - in particular, about the dumping of radioactive waste into the sea. He was detained, stripped of his military rank, and in 2001 sentenced to four years in prison to be served in a maximum security colony. A little over a year later, Pasko was released on parole. The court in Strasbourg considered that since Pasko was an officer at the time of his actions, he was obliged to comply with the limits that the military profession imposed on him, and the information that he conveyed to the Japanese side was valid could cause damage to the state security of Russia. Pasko writes in his blog that the current decision of the European Court is a spit in the souls of thousands of people, including those who are still waiting for positive decisions in their cases and now, according to the journalist, may not receive them Essentially, he states that the Strasbourg court “completely ignores the fact that ALL military journalists in Russia were guided in their activities by the law on media,” since there is no separate law on military media. In addition, according to Pasko, the court ignored the fact that the first sentence against him was overturned by the Supreme Court, and the second was significantly changed, that his actions did not fall under the law, which had not yet entered into force at that time, but under by-laws, finally, that the verdict stated that he only “had the intention” to transfer secret information to the Japanese, but did not transfer it. “With this decision,” writes Pasko, “the ECHR recognizes that a person can be called a criminal before a court decision; that experts in a case initiated by the KGB can be KGB officers; that the case can be considered for 6 years and this will not be considered an unreasonable period; that it is possible to apply not laws, but by-laws and on their basis to accuse and judge people; that a journalist in Russia does not have the right to express his opinion openly and that a journalist has no right to write on the topic of ecology without the permission of the KGB; that the ruling of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation on the falsification of materials of a criminal case, which came into legal force, was simply a dream for everyone.” In addition, according to the journalist, the court’s decision calls into question the authority of the human rights organization Amnesty International, which back in 1999 recognized Pasko as a prisoner of conscience and other similar structures that spoke in his defense, the European Parliament, which addressed his case in several resolutions, lawyers from the PACE Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, who indicated that Pasko’s conviction was not based on the law, but on a secret order of the Ministry of Defense. At the end of the message in blog Pasko writes that the decision of the Strasbourg court practically deprives independent journalists in Russia of the opportunity to rely on Article 10 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, concerning the right of everyone to free expression.