Bishkek City Court considered the appeal of 24.kg news agency. The management of the news agency filed a complaint against the actions of the investigator, who prohibited the general director and the chief editors from disclosing data about the criminal case initiated under the article «Propaganda of War».
This decision was appealed in the Pervomaisky District Court, but the investigating judge rejected the appeal. The decision was appealed in the City Court.
As the lawyer Nurbek Sydykov noted, the management of 24.kg news agency does not agree with the fact that they were forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement, because there were no legal and reasonable grounds for this. «The whole point of the complaint is that at the time the agreement was signed, a motivated decision of the investigator and specification of the data that should not be disclosed was necessary,» he said.
The lawyer added that the City Court has so far announced only the operative part. «We do not know yet on what basis it was rejected,» he added.
It should be noted that in the complaint 24.kg news agency asked the district court to recognize the decision of the senior investigator for especially important cases of the State Investigative Committee of the State Committee for National Security, Erlan Akynbekov, as illegal and unfounded and to oblige the violation to be eliminated.
Employees of the State Committee for National Security came to the office of 24.kg news agency on January 16 at about 11 a.m. General Director Asel Otorbaeva, Editors-in-Chief Anton Lymar and Makhinur Niyazova were taken for interrogation. Equipment and personal mobile phones of employees were confiscated. The SCNS said that the search at 24.kg news agency was conducted as part of a criminal case under the article «Propaganda of War» of the Criminal Code of the Kyrgyz Republic. On January 17, the managers were summoned for questioning again.
