According to the human rights organization Crimea SOS. Her lawyers filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) regarding the illegal detention and conviction of civil journalist Iryna Danylovych in the temporarily occupied Crimea. Oleksii Tilnenko, the board chairperson of Crimea SOS, said that the complaint primarily concerns the illegal detention of civil journalist Iryna Danylovych, which itself violates a number of rights enshrined in the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and its protocols.
Therefore, for example, Article 5 of the Convention provides for the fact that everyone has the right to freedom and personal integrity.
As earlier reported, Iryna Danylovych is a nurse and civil activist from Feodosia, she collaborated with the publication INzhyr Media and the human rights project Crimean Process. The woman defended the interests of medical workers on the peninsula: she joined an independent trade union, wrote a lot about the violation of their rights, for example, about underpayment for working with patients suffering from Covid-19.
Officers of the Federal Security Bureau of Russia kidnapped Iryna Danylovych on April 29 and kept her in an FSB basement until May 7 without any status or legal assistance. She was interrogated on a polygraph, put under psychological pressure: they promised to take her to the forest, to Mariupol, and gave her food only once a day. She stated this in an illegal “trial” in Feodosia.
Later, explosives were “found” in Danylovych’s bag, which was seized from her. On May 7, the so-called Kyivskyi District Court of Simferopol chose for her a preventive measure of taking her into custody for two months.
At the end of July, the journalist was able to report that FSB officers continued to exert pressure on her in the Simferopol pre-trial detention center. In particular, she was injured during her being brought before the court.
On July 5, “judge” Olga Kuznetsova extended the journalist’s detention by two months, ignoring the fact that Danylovych was detained a week earlier for officially issued documents.
At the meeting on November 7, the defense filed a request to summon 16 people to the “court” for questioning as witnesses, including FSB employees, who were involved in the kidnapping of the journalist, her illegal detention for a week in the basement of the FSB and falsification of the criminal case. The illegal “trial” refused all requests, except for the summoning of one defense witness – Suleiman Kadyrov, who does not have information on the merits of the accusation, and could only give characterizing testimony.
Despite the indignation of the international human rights community, on December 28, 2022, the Russian occupation court of Crimea continued to hear the falsified trial. On December 28, 2022, the so-called Feodosia City Court announced the sentence to civil journalist Iryna Danylovych. She was sentenced to seven years in prison and fined RUB 50,000 for alleged “storing explosives.”
Now the authoritative international human rights organization Crimea SOS filed the case of Danylovych to the ECHR. Will this authoritative international organization protect the journalist, considering the fact that Russia quit the Council of Europe, and therefore the jurisdiction of the ECHR. This is rather doubtful as even if the ECHR takes a step, obliging Russia to restore legality regarding Iryna Danylovych, Russia is unlikely to fulfill it, since Moscow had also ignored ECHR’s decisions.
As earlier reported, Ukrainian human rights organizations, as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, non-governmental organizations, including the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU), declared violations of the law regarding Iryna Danylovych and demanded her immediate release.
NUJU information service
