On January 31, 2018 in the Gagarinskii District Court of the city of Sevastopol, prosecution witnesses in the case of Ukrainian citizen Igor Movenko were interrogated.
The first who was interrogated was the FSB officer Alexei Mursa, who conducted a search in the house of Movenko as a “house survey.” The survey was conducted on December 16, 2016. As a result, a laptop, hard disk drives from a home computer, sim cards and package from the start package were confiscated from Movenko. Also a mobile phone was taken away. The search was conducted by 7 people, and two witnesses were present.
One of the prosecution witnesses reported that during the search at work, Mostenko was handcuffed, with his hands tucked behind his back, and he had no way to contact his lawyer. The prosecution witness, who was present during the search, told this today during the court session.
The defence of Movenko informed that FSB officer Alexei Mursa repeatedly summoned Igor Movenko to his office after the search for psychological pressure on him. However, according to the information of defence, he refused to talk with the Ukrainian in the presence of a lawyer.
Officer of the FSB Mursa denied these facts. He said in the “court” that he didn’t called Movenko specifically for the meetings. He said that he did it at the request of the investigator. However, Alexei Mursa could not name the investigator, who allegedly asked him to call Movenko for interrogation.
Two more witnesses were interrogated in court; they were members of the social network group “Crimea – Ukraine” and posted in the social network VKontakte. Igor Motenko is judged now for the comment in this group. Witnesses claimed that, in their opinion, the comment is extremist. They explained that they joined to the public just because of interest, although they themselves consider Crimea is Russian.
Recall, that on October 26, 2017 Igor Movenko was handed a decision to bring him as an accused under part 2 of Article 280 of the Criminal Code (Public calls for the implementation of extremist activities) in the Office of the Federal Security Service of the city of Sevastopol. The criminal case against Igor Movenko was opened for the comment, which, according to investigators, published in the summer 2016 in KRYM – UKRAINA (Crimea – Ukraine) Group in VKontakte social network.
The comment expresses the opinion regarding the need for violent actions against those who participated in the occupation of Crimea. The comment demonstrates the author’s apparent disagreement with the occupation of Crimea, and earlier Igor Movenko openly demonstrated support for the territorial integrity of Ukraine by placing Ukrainian symbols on his personal bicycle. Taking this into account, a criminal case against him can be regarded as politically motivated.
The selective practice of FSB to use “extremist articles” confirmed the fact that the criminal case against Igor Movenko was opened after he tried to start an investigation into the attack on him by a former employee of “Berkut” of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. The same comment was published much earlier, but then did not draw attention to the FSB. The case of the attack on the Ukrainian was never studied, but after his repeated statements about the attack, a criminal case was started against him.
