Svetlana Glushkova was found guilty and fined

On April 2, Asiya Doschanova, a judge of the specialized inter-district administrative court of Astana, found  the correspondent of Azattyk Radio and Present Time Channel Svetlana Glushkova guilty of committing offenses under Part 1 of Art. 73-2 (“Beating”) and under Part 1 of Art. 653 (“Disrespect to court”).On charges of beatings, the journalist was fined 10 Monthly Calculated Index (MCI) to the state using a 30% discount (8838 tenge) . On the second charge, the journalist the punishment was a warning. Gulnar Turarbekova, a volunteer at Astana zhastary, accused the journalist of “beatings”. Allegedly, this happened on March 22 near the Shapagat market in Astana, when Svetlana Glushkova covered the detention of citizens who did not agree with the renaming of the capital to Nur-Sultan. According to Svetlana Glushkova  on that day, during the live broadcast, unknown persons impeded her work in every way, closed the camera with their hands, pushed the journalists.  Turarbekova was one of them. Svetlana turned for help to the Deputy Head of the Astana Police Department, Bakhytzhan Malybaev. “But he led me to Turarbekova, who began to scream that I had hit her and behaved defiantly. To this, policeman Malybaev said that I should be grabbed and taken to the police station, that the girl would write a claim. There is a video. My broadcast was disrupted, ”adds Glushkova.

On March 22, Svetlana Glushkova was detained for drawing up a protocol and spent more than five hours in the police; she was not provided with any documents.

On March 31, when Svetlana was returning from her work trip, eight policemen detained her at the Nur-Sultan airport, demanding to sign a protocol. The journalist refused to take any action before the arrival of her lawyer. Lawyer Baurzhan Azanov, who arrived on emergency call from Glushkova, found several procedural violations in the protocol and actions of the police, that he later appealed at  court, but his suit was rejected.

The court hearings scheduled for April 1 were postponed for several times for various reasons. When the applicant G.Turarbekova without identification documents appeared in the courtroom, the meeting was postponed to 2 April.  While studying the documents, Bauyrzhan Azanov  found out that some documents were missing.

At the very beginning of the court hearings, Svetlana Glushkova challenged the judge due to the fact that she allowed representative of a minor Tururbekova, who could not confirm her credentials with documents to be present in the court room as a participant .The court rejected the petition, the hearings continued. The lawyer of the journalist and observers noted a number of inconsistencies. So, the judge could not explain why the guardian of the victim participates in the process on the basis of a poorly distinguishable photocopy of the “power of attorney”, besides it turned out that Turarbekova’s representatives were not present when the police was drawing up the protocol.

Judge Asiya Doschanova's answer to all petititons o the defense was: “You have the right to present your arguments while appealing the judicial act”.W

hen lawyer B. Azanov and S. Glushkova again challenged the judge, Asiya Doschanova ordered to remove the journalist from the courtroom. The lawer  also left the courtroom. “The frame-up show is over,” Svetlana said after the court ruling was proclaimed.