Reporters Without Borders Claims Rezink’s and Tolmachev’s Legal Persecution is a Reprisal for Their Work

Legal pursuits of two Russian journalists, Sergei Reznik (Yuzhny Ferderalny) and Aleksandr Tolmachev (Upolnomochen Zayavit, Pro Rostov), continue. The two journalists are both known for investigating corruption and for criticizing many officials from their hometown Rostov-on-Don, and now they are facing trials for several charges.

On 24 July 2014, in fact, Reznik, who had already been sentenced to 18 months in penal colony last year, was sued for libeling by Roman Klimov, former regional deputy prosecutor, Dmitry Ishtshenko, head of the General Directorate for Combating Extremism, and Andrei Glinkin, a Rostov police officer, who were criticized by the journalist. Tolmachev, after spending almost three years in preventive detention, was sentenced on 29 October to nine years of hard labor in a penal colony, charged with extortion.

Reporters Without Borders denounce their cases as a reprisal in order to stop their journalistic investigations. According to what NGO’s head of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk Johann Bihir said, there have been “multiple procedural errors and weak evidence” in Rezink’s and Tolmachev’s trials, which are essentially unfair and vitiated.

Journalists’ defendants are therefore appealing for transferring the venues, in hopes of having more impartial trials.

Source: http://en.rsf.org