Rostov journalist is asked to give three years

On November 26, in the Pervomaisky court of Rostov-on-Don, a sentence in the case of a local opposition journalist and blogger Sergei Reznik will be announced. He is charged with commercial bribery (Article 204 of the Criminal Code), a false denunciation (Article 306) and an insult to a representative of the authorities (Article 319), all episodes are united in one thing. The prosecutor asked for the persuasion of Reznik to three years in prison.

Reznik is convinced that the case against him was falsified and explained by his opposition journalistic activity, and in recent years he was engaged exclusively on the blog - after, according to him, "the sixth or seventh newspaper was closed in which I worked in Rostov." Reznik told the OVD-Info that the operational case was instituted for him after in 2011, when “there was a large war of local bureaucracy” against the now former prosecutor of the Rostov region Valery Kuznetsov , “who took a fundamental position in many positions,” the journalist “was one of the few who spoke out for the prosecutor”. Reznik’s phone began to listen, in early 2012, calls with threats went. Among those who called Reznik, they call Andrei Solodovnikov - according to the activist of the regional branch of the party on December 5, Boris Baty, this is a “provocateur who always rubs around all opposition movements, everyone knows him and has long been driving.”

The commercial bribery, which is charged with the Reznik, according to the investigation, is that he allegedly tried to bribe the inspection station employee in order to pass the inspection without presenting the car. According to Reznik, in court it was possible to prove that he did not bribe a person, but he himself was offered to pay two thousand rubles and not to undergo inspection - they say, he would be brought a diagnostic card home. A man named Denis Grishanov, with whom the Reznik spoke, was called the administrator of the inspection point in the case, despite the fact that he actually works for an individual entrepreneur, "the administrative functions, the official duties of this boy are not spelled out anywhere." Reznik eventually arrived at the inspection station himself, received a map from Grishanov and was about to leave the station, when suddenly three police cars were blocked . This happened on August 21 last year, then Reznik still worked in the New Gazeta in the Southern Federal. Reznik is sure that all this was staged. As Boris Batu notes, in the case there are photos of two bills with a dignity of a thousand rubles each, but one of them does not coincide with those written in the protocols. In addition, an expert who photographed the place of the alleged crime signed in the protocol under a strange surname - only the initials coincide. The notorious diagnostic card is photographed only on the one hand, so, according to Batu, “it is not known whether Makhina has passed the inspection or not whether it is working or not, it just appears in the case, and it is not clear whether it is or not.” Observers are also suspected by the fact that Reznik was blocked at the moment when he was only about to leave, and not on the exit from the station.

After Reznik wrote complaints to the Investigative Committee, the Prosecutor's Office and the FSB on the fact of telephone threats, but no one reacted, he himself began to investigate who was doing this. Then he was charged with a false denunciation: Andrei Solodovnikov and a man by the name of Skobelev stated that Reznik himself gave them money and SIM cards to call him and threaten him-supposedly to increase his own rating. At the same time, as Batu says, Skobelev did not appear to the court-"the investigation was actively hiding him somewhere." According to Reznik, in some cases, in the days when, according to the investigation, there were a meeting with the victims, he has an alibi: so, on one of the indicated days he was not in Rostov at all. Reznik’s lawyer Yuri Kastrubin noted that the investigator has incorrectly qualified the episode. Of insulting the representative of Reznik, they are accused of recording in the “Live Journal”, where he called the chairman of the arbitration court of the region Olga Soloviev (at the moment the corresponding posting from the LJ Reznik was removed). Reznik says that as evidence, prints of Word files with texts copied from its LiveJournal were given.

This year, the Reznik, according to him, "then the locks will flood at home with glue, then they will break the car." On October 22, two, one with a traumatic gun, one with a bat, attacked Reznik with his wife at the entrance. Reznik was injured. A criminal case has been instituted on this fact. On November 24, Reznik, having arrived with a friend to the entrance of his house, saw two awaits them: “It comes out - it is clear that a fighter, went to beat. And behind him the second, cover. We approached them, they scattered. We were followed by them, the operatives counted six. And only we are going to them, they run away from us. ” Shortly before the conversation of the OVD-Info correspondent with a Reznik, a journalist's friend told him that he was called from a certain Tyumen number and said that he would forget the surname Reznik.

The journalist, referring to his own sources, claims that according to the plan of investigators, he should now bear a conditional sentence. But besides the cases in which the decision is expected now, two more cases have been instituted against him. One again about the insult of the representative of the authorities: this time the deputy prosecutor of the region of Roman Klimov, whom Reznik called the tractor driver, as well as the swindler, the whole -stand and squire, deputy prosecutor Sergei Vorobyov, who previously worked in the Rostov region, who Klimov was a relative. The second is again a false denunciation : during the operational-search measures, Reznik told the investigator that he believes that one of the police officers had performed sexual acts with the boy. According to Reznik, also based on data received from his own sources, after a conditional sentence, one more thing from several episodes will be issued to present it with a recidivist and bring it under a real term.

The other day, official case file entered the Memorial human rights center. As the OVD-INFO, the head of the support program for political prisoners of PC Memorial Sergey Davidis, “it is very likely that as a result of studying the materials of Reznik will be recognized either by political prisoner, if he is imprisoned, or by a person undergoing illegal politically motivated persecution. Everything that is known about this case makes us believe that we will come to this conclusion, but it is necessary to make a reasonable, formalized and reasoned judgment, and for this we need to study a large array of documents related to the case. ” The Memorial expects to make a judgment on the Reznik case “in the foreseeable future” - perhaps “within a few days”.