Trial on Petropavlovsk journalists complaint: to be continued

The frist hearing of  interfering with legal professional activity of Khabar 24 TV journalists has finished in Petropavlovsk City Court.

As the hearing started the lawyer of the defendant - the head of the mall security service Sultan Sagandykov - stated that the entire investigation should be declared invalid, and the case files should be returned to the prosecutor. The representative of the prosecutor's office did not agree with the arguments of the lawyer. Judge Asem Janalina dismissed the motion.

The affected journalists were interrogated.

The next hearing will take place on October 18. As it was reported, on August 2, 2021, Khabar 24 TV team was was covering the functioning of the ASHIQ program (that identifies COVID-19 status) in the Dostyk Mall. Security officers of the Dostyk Mall shopping center pushed them out of the building. Journalists Samat Dzhakupov, Natalya Volkova and cameraman Tolegen Imanov filed a complaint with the police. Since then, the criminal investigation was dropped for five times. Each time journalists insisted that the case was dropped illegally.

It should be noted that this is only the second case in the history of independent Kazakhstan, when the case under Article 158 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan came to tiral.