“Journalists were shot, illegally detained, subjected to torture and inhumane treatment,” a representative of the Prosecutor General’s Office

Oleksandr Ziuz, who is responsible for the investigation of war crimes, spoke about the criminal activities of the russian occupiers against journalists in Ukraine.

Regional prosecutor’s offices conduct procedural management in 92 criminal proceedings regarding war crimes against journalists, and the Prosecutor General’s Office – in seven. Most of such facts were recorded in Donetsk, Kyiv, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson Regions.

Oleksandr Ziuz, the head of the Department of Interaction with International Government and Non-Governmental Organizations of the Department of Combating Crimes Committed in Conditions of Armed Conflict of the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, stated this at the opening of the Council of Europe’s campaign called Journalists Matter in Ukraine.

The video from the event is published by the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine. Representatives of the government, the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defense, law enforcement agencies, the President of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU), Sergiy Tomilenko, and the NUJU First Secretary, Lina Kushch, media experts took part in the opening of the campaign.

According to Oleksandr Ziuz, during the pre-trial investigation in criminal proceedings regarding war crimes against media workers since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, 49 journalists were killed, including seven foreigners, 43 journalists were injured, including 19 foreigners, and 19 journalists were illegally detained or deprived of freedom.

“Journalists became victims of direct shootings, artillery shelling of the front-line territory, and missile strikes on Ukraine. They were subjected to illegal detention, torture, and inhuman treatment. Some of them are still in the temporarily occupied territories and territories of the russian federation as civilian hostages,” Oleksandr Ziuz emphasized.

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, four indictments in criminal proceedings against ten people have been sent to the court in the order of a special pre-trial investigation. Of them, three persons were sentenced in absentia – one person to nine years of imprisonment and two persons – to 12 years of imprisonment. There are also reports of suspected rocket fire during which journalists were killed and injured.

In addition, the Kyiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office sent an indictment to the court against a serviceman of the armed forces of the russian federation who threatened one of the journalists with physical violence. According to the judgment of the Solomiyanskyi District Court of Kyiv, the specified person was found guilty and sentenced to nine years in prison.

The Kherson regional prosecutor’s office referred to the court, in the order of special court proceedings, an indictment against two persons who imprisoned a journalist in the Kakhovka District Police Department of the National Security Service of Ukraine in the Kherson Region and caused him bodily harm. According to the results of the investigation, the specified persons were found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment.

Oleksandr Ziuz reminded that in the last report of the UN monitoring mission, it was stated that officials of local self-government bodies, activists, and journalists were included in the category of persons who were subjected to illegal deprivation of liberty, torture, and inhumane treatment, among other categories.

“We are working in the international arena to bring to justice those guilty of committing such war crimes,” the prosecutor emphasized. “In each case, we communicate with the representatives of the countries to which this or that person belongs in order to open proceedings within the framework of universal jurisdiction and to carry out a joint investigation – either within the framework of fulfilling requests for international legal assistance or when creating joint investigative teams with competent authorities different countries. Such a group in our country is already working with the competent authorities of Ireland and France in connection with the death of a French-Irish journalist.”

As Oleksandr Ziuz emphasized, the prosecutor’s office also fulfills the requests of other countries regarding the deaths of foreign journalists — it provides information and cooperates in other ways. Already, the first suspicions from the competent authorities of the Republic of Lithuania regarding the fact of the death of the Lithuanian documentarian Mantas Kvedaravicius.

The Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine is involved in the creation of the International Platform for the Return of Civilian Prisoners who are in the temporarily occupied territories and the territory of the russian federation. Among them are also journalists, the prosecutor concluded.

NUJU Information Service