One of the arrested journalists had for years covered the trials of Alexeï Navalny, the number 1 political opponent of Vladimir Putin who died in prison on February 16.
:quality(50)/2023/07/06/64a68815cd1a7_placeholder-36b69ec8.png)
Published
Reading time: 1 min
:quality(50)/2024/03/28/000-33ak74d-660550bdc1e0b435926176.jpg)
The repression of freedoms is not weakening in Russia. Five journalists working for independent media were arrested in the country on Wednesday March 27 and Thursday March 28, announced an NGO and Russian media.
During the night from Wednesday to Thursday, the police arrested Ekaterina Anikievitch of the media SOTAvision and Konstantin Jarov of RusNews, reported the NGO OVD-Info, specializing in monitoring repression in Russia. Konstantin Jarov was beaten and threatened with sexual violence by the police, according to a witness to the scene cited by this organization.
“They hit me with their feet, put a foot on my head, twisted my fingers, laughed at me when I tried to get up,” said Konstantin Jarov, quoted by his media RusNews. He said he had a head injury, abrasions, dislocated fingers and sprains.
Alexei Navalny’s latest video
According to him, this violence was caused by filming carried out near the home of another journalist, Antonina Favorskaïa of SOTAvision, who was arrested on Wednesday evening immediately after being released after 10 days of administrative detention for disobedience to the police. This journalist’s apartment was searched Wednesday evening, as was that of her parents, said her lawyer cited by SOTAvision.
Two other journalists, Alexandra Astakhova and Anastassia Moussatova, who had come to meet their colleague after he was released from detention, were also arrested and taken to be questioned by investigators, according to the same source.
According to the Mediazona news website, which specializes in monitoring legal cases, the case against Antonina Favorskaïa is linked to the activities of the movement of opponent Alexeï Navalny, who died in prison in February and whose organizations are classified as “extremist”. by Russian justice. Antonina Favorskaïa had been covering the trials involving Alexeï Navalny for years, and had filmed the last video showing the opponent still alive, on February 15 during a court hearing. She was arrested on March 17, a few hours after placing flowers on the opponent’s grave, according to Mediazona.