"Sentence of freedom of speech"

The court in Simferopol, which was controlled by the Russian authorities, sentenced the Crimean journalist Nikolai Semen, who is accused of violation of the territorial integrity of Russia, who was accused of Crimean journalist. The judge of the Zheleznodorozhny District Court of Simferopol Natalya School found Semyon guilty and sentenced him to two and a half years conditionally with a trial period and the ban on engaging in any public activity. Earlier, the prosecution demanded to sentenced him to three years in prison with a probation and prohibiting profession for three years.

The process in the case of Nikolai Semyon began in April and lasted six months. On September 18, the state prosecution demanded for the journalist three years in prison with a probation and prohibition of engaging in public activities. The fact that the verdict would be the defendant either the defendant himself or the defense was doubted, all petitions for the exclusion of evidence of the prosecution as unacceptable were rejected. The prosecutor Svetlana Udanskaya during the debate of the parties stated that the investigation in the case was "comprehensively and objectively, in full." The defense and the seeds themselves claim that the journalist is persecuted only because he openly declared disagreement with the annexation of Crimea Russia.

Nikolai Semyon

The process was supposed to be the first in the court controlled by the court by a conversation in the legal language about the status of the peninsula after the spring of 2014. However, this did not happen, the accusation did everything to turn the process into a technical discussion of the procedural actions of the investigation. For six months of the trial, a lot was said about what was written by a journalist, and in fact, it was never discussed why.

Nikolai Semen has been journalism in Crimea for several decades. By the beginning of the events of 2014, he wrote for the newspaper "Day", "Mirrors of the Week", and with the project "Crimea. Realia" collaborates from the moment it was opened. Initially, the project tried to organize the work of its authors in Crimea traditionally: the office was in the center of Simferopol. In court, several letters were read out in Ukrainian from the personal correspondence of the seed, which fell into the hands of the FSB officers after the search. The journalist wrote to the project editor that working in Crimea has become unsafe and it is necessary to take conspiracy measures. He published many of his texts under the pseudonym.

On April 19, 2016, the FSB officers conducted seven people at once, one way or another related to the Krime. Real project, including Semyon. The formal basis for searches was the initiation of the case against him under Article 280.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Calls to violate the territorial integrity of the country." In fact, the correspondent network of the publication, not controlled by the Russian authorities, was defeated. By this time, several dozen Ukrainian media were forced to stop working in Crimea. Some of them moved to Kyiv, including the Crimean Tatar television channel ATR, whose Crimean office also searched several times. Semen seized equipment, the archives that he collected for several decades, he was charged. From the second interrogation, he refused to answer questions from the investigator, referring to the 51st article of the Constitution.

The article "Blockade is the necessary first step towards the liberation of Crimea", for which Semyon was judged, was published in September 2015. Then, according to investigators, it was read by several people who said in the FSB. Natalya Poklonskaya, who then headed the Crimean prosecutor’s office, traditionally acted as a “speaker” in the case, which conducted the special services, explaining that “during the investigative action, the FSB officers were discovered and seized, as well as other documents testifying to the preparation of an extremist article.” The article of Semyon was published in the section "Opinions", and it was about the assessment of the energy unit, which Ukrainian nationalists organized the peninsula with the support of the Crimean Tatar activists. On the administrative border with the Kherson region, the pillars of the power line were blown up, light disappeared in the Crimea, and in the Ukrainian public space a discussion unfolded about the appropriateness of such a step. Semyon wrote an article in the framework of this discussion and expressed the opinion that such measures can force Russia to leave the peninsula. He signed the text with the pseudonym Valentin Gonchar. The Russian security forces intended to enter into a discussion and initiated a criminal case. However, judging by the case file represented by the court, they watched Semena for a long time, trying to find the grounds for accusing the treason.

In May 2014, the seeds and journalist of the Polish edition of the newspaper Vyborch Vaclav Radzivinovich talked to the Cafe "Sofa" in the center of Simferopol, when several people armed with pistols were detained.

- We are sitting, talking, he speaks with an accent. After some time, some move began in a cafe, men come to us. Pistols in the hand, covered with jackets. The table was surrounded by: "Do not make sudden movements, hands on the table, present documents." We presented. Radzivinovich has a passport, Foreign Ministry accreditation, a border crossing certificate, a residence permit in Moscow. We demanded to show the certificates, they show us, I look, and there it is written - the SBU. “We still had no certification,” they say, ”said Nikolai Semyon.

I had the feeling that someone was sitting on a computer

Journalists were taken to the department, where they interviewed and let go of the Foreign Ministry. Subsequently, Radzvinovich was deprived of accreditation for work in Russia, formally - in response to the expulsion of Leonid Sviridov, who was suspected of espionage from Poland, from Poland.

After this incident, according to Semyon, he constantly felt surveillance, unfamiliar cars stood in the courtyard of the house. Suddenly he did not have the Internet, he called the master. Two young people arrived who tuned in touch, including on a journalist’s computer. Semyon believes that it was then that the observation of his work has begun.

Nikolay Semyon in court

-I had the feeling that someone was sitting on a computer. When I came to the first interrogation, they had such a pack of screenshots from the screen. I noticed how they shot screenshots: the cursor goes, then once it stops, it costs for some time, the computer hangs, and nothing can be done with it. At this time, a screenshot was shot. The whole process, when I wrote an article, for paragraphs, they have, ”said Semyon.

In the case file, indeed, three volumes of such screenshots. They starred, judging by the frequency, every minute. In the case there are forty sheets of the empty screen of the Semyon computer when he moved away from the workplace for forty minutes. The surveillance program continued to work at this time. The case file also contains personal correspondence of the seed, which he led from another computer. It is possible to explain its appearance only by hacking the mail.

For surveillance, the FSB operative Ilya Khomenko was responsible, he was questioned on the very first day of the trial. Officially, he began to hold it on September 10, 2015, although the article was published only the next day. But in the case file, there are surveillance results and earlier, including correspondence from the seeds of the seeds, which he had not used by that time for several months. Khomenko unexpectedly stated on the trial that there was a court decision on surveillance even before the text on the blockade of Crimea.

“This is a very important point for us,” said lawyer Alexander Popkov. -testifying to the fact that the FSB officers either carried out these events illegally, unauthorized, arbitrarily, or now, during the trial, they announced the materials of operational-search activities, which are a state secret.

Lawyer Alexander Popkov

The court decision, which is available from the case file, states that the first suspicions of the seeds of the security forces were in the Stateizer. "According to the data obtained, the seeds supports sustainable ties with persons suspected of involvement in intelligence and other subversive activities of the Ukrainian special services. On the instructions of the latter, the seeds on a reimbursable basis carry out the preparation and transfer of a tendential texts on the situation in the Republic of Crimea, which are then used in special information to the interests of the Russian Federation. The information received indicates the signs of signs The implementation of illegal activities provided for in Article 275 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation is state treason, ”the document says.

It obviously failed to collect any materials on Gosizman and the prosecution was brought in separatism. As evidence that there are calls for violation of territorial integrity in the Semyon article, the prosecution used the examination prepared in the same FSB department Olga Ivanova. “I conducted an examination from May 16 to May 19, 2016 under the article posted on the Krymreal website,” said Ivanova during the interrogation in court. “The article contains calls for violation of the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation. The calls are expressed by the words:“ The blockade should be ... ”The call is answered by the relevant signs, addressed to the addressee to encourage specific actions. We are talking about the return of Crimea to the return of Crimea to Ukraine .

Ivanova conducted the examination not under the article on the site, but according to her screenshots, which were provided by the FSB operatives. Among the main issues that the expert tried to answer, is there a call to violation of territorial integrity in the text and are there signs of extremism. Ivanova founded her conclusions on four manuals issued by the FSB, did not use scientific literature at all. In the text of the examination, protection, which conducted its independent analysis, counted 72 grammatical errors. “These phrases are taken from methodological recommendations,” Ivanova explained. “Seriously? The institution of forensic examination does not agree on cases?” The lawyer was surprised. “And do you rewrite it as an expert linguist?” Ivanova confirmed.

The speaker reports which, in his opinion, there should be a blockade. These are not directives, not an impulse, and even more so not a call

“I am embarrassed to say this about the work of a colleague, but this is an expert opinion of extremely low quality,” said Elena Novozhilova, Moscow expert linguist, in court during the interrogation. - There is no research part in it. Of the twenty -one page of this examination, half are the studied text, quotes of laws. Students write so at universities, "disperse" the text to the desired volume. I suppose this is done to camouflage the absence of the research part.

Novozhilova said in court that not every phrase with the word "should" is a call:

- This is a representative. The speaker reports which, in his opinion, there should be a blockade. These are not directives, not a motivation, and even more so not a call. It turns out, according to the expert, the author turns to the blockade: "You must be like that and such." Well, this is absurd. And finally, the expert does not describe at all why she believes that it was a call ... I must admit that this expert is incompetent, ”Novozhilova finished her speech.

In fact, except for Olga Ivanova’s examination criticized in court, the accusation of other evidence of Semyon’s guilt did not present. The defense, in addition to the review of Novozhilova, prepared, for example, a political science examination of Professor Kuban University Mikhail Savva, who tried to prove that international law, which officially dominates Russia over the national, just allows Semen to disagree with the position of the Russian authorities in the Crimea. The journalist himself tried to talk about this during the debate of the parties:

“Documents establish the priority of the Russian-Ukrainian border along the Kerch Strait, and according to them, this border in the manner prescribed by law was never transferred to Perekop, and it was never established on it in the manner prescribed by law,” he tried to explain his position to the court, referring to the norms of international law. - Therefore, the law of March 18, 2014 on the inclusion of Crimea and Sevastopol in Russia is contrary to these priority norms of the legislation of the Russian Federation and international law. The issue of implementing this contradictory law has already become the subject of consideration in the UN International Court in The Hague, the ECHR in Strasbourg, and they will undoubtedly decide in accordance with international law. Judges and international organizations have already submitted documents confirming the military nature of the operation: schedules for the export of families from the Crimea of the Russian troops of the Black Sea Fleet, schedules for the import of military units from Russia, their numbers, the number of commanders and military personnel, the number of military equipment assigned to them, the schedule of their loading, the norms of power supply, the tasks at the site of the separation. Documents on the arrests and torture of activists, on the activities of the illegal militarized self -defense organization, graphs of seizures of facilities in the Crimea and lists of participants, certificate of power pressure on deputies of Crimea in order to make a decision on a referendum, which was transferred three times and three times changed.

-According to the international legal agreements, the Constitution of the Russian Federation and federal law, the State Russian-Ukrainian border between the Republic of Crimea and the Kherson region of Ukraine has not been established, therefore, the limit of the state sovereignty of the Russian Federation is not extended to the territory of the Crimea, de facto controlled by the Russian authorities, the lawyer Alexander Popkov said in the debate. Before that, the court introduced the resolution of the UN 68/262 General Assembly to the case file, which we are talking about Ukrainian affiliation of Crimea, and extracts from the UN Charter about the principle of territorial integrity of the participating states.

The response of the state prosecutor was short: the prosecutor Svetlana Udanskaya referred to the Russian Constitution and the law on the accession of the 2014 peninsula. She did not talk about the norms of international law. She only stated that "the meaning of the Semyon’s article was reduced in calls to the beginning of hostilities against the inhabitants of the Crimean Peninsula, the destruction of their infrastructure," for which she asked for a journalist a punishment in the form of three years conditionally.

The rights of their citizens, the rights of citizens of neighboring states, the war is engaged, the war is unleashed

“Of course, we are sure that there will be a conviction,” said lawyer Emil Kurbedinov. -But there is hope, including due to the fact that this case received a huge resonance both here and abroad, that there may be a conditional sentence. But the verdict will be - it is definitely.

Lawyer Emil Kurbedinov

The last word Semyon has traditionally devoted to political trials not at all his work.

- Obviously, in the issue of Crimea, the authorities themselves violated both international law and its numerous external obligations and domestic laws, came contrary to signed agreements and obligations, although there was a real opportunity to solve this issue in accordance with international law and without all the complications that it received in response, ”said Semyon in court. - The rights of their citizens, the rights of citizens of neighboring states, the war, is unleashed. And in order to hide from criticism for this violation of the law and evade responsibility, the officials of this country in parallel with the process of illegal annexation introduced article 280.1 to criminal law, precisely to persecute their critics. Now this power, which is to blame for itself, is trying to shift its guilt on others, including journalists and me, in particular, and tries to make sure that not a single opinion is published in the country that is different from the opinion of the authorities. But the fact is that this is a violation of the constitution.

This is not so much a sentence to me, a Ukrainian journalist as all journalism in Russia

The human rights organization "Memorial" recognized that Semen is persecuted for political reasons. In Kyiv, a journalist was handed in absentia to the "National respect", and to receive a bonus named after the deceased journalist Pavel Sheremet in Brussels instead of Semyon, who is under subscription about the lower way, the editor -in -chief of Crimea. Realia, Vladimir Prutula. “It is unacceptable to pursue a journalist for the expression of his point of view,” Dunya Miyatovich, a representative of the OSCE, said from Russia. In Russia, neither journalists nor politicians performed in support of the seed.

Award to Nikolai Semen

- This is not so much a sentence to me, a Ukrainian journalist as all journalism in Russia. For if there is no freedom of speech for everyone, there will be no freedom of expression of opinions for everyone, then there will be no journalism as such, there will be no freedom of speech - there will be no civil society, there will be no honest justice - there will be no legal society, then citizens will cease to be citizens and will vassals, ”said Semyon at the end of his last word.

In addition to Semyon, the charges were made in Crimea to several journalists who managed to leave the peninsula before the start of the prosecution. Аналогичные обвинения предъявлены также главе крымско-татарского Меджлиса Рефату Чубарову и заместителю председателя этой организации Ильми Умерову, приговор которым будет оглашен 27 сентября в Симферопольском районном суде.

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