CPJ calls Rostov authorities to investigate into attack on editor-in-chief of "Corruption and Criminality"

Authorities in Rostov-on-Don must launch a criminal investigation into a possible attack on the editor-in-chief of an independent newspaper, who was found unconscious with a head wound in the early morning of April 30, as stated by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Vyacheslav Yaroshenko, editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Corruption and Criminality", was found at the foot of a staircase in his building's entryway. He was hospitalized with skull and brain trauma; doctors performed two surgeries and the editor spent five days in a coma, his deputy, Sergei Sleptsov reported. Yaroshenko was taken off a respirator today, but he remains unconscious, as Mr Sleptsov said.

Grigory Bochkaryov, Rostov correspondent of the Russian Service of Radio Liberty, said to the CPJ that at once after the editor had got to hospital, the militia said he was injured in a fistfight on a local street at around 10 p.m. on Wednesday. He has added that earlier the militia had already stated that Yaroshenko came home drunk and injured himself by falling down the stairs in the entrance of his apartment building," said the CPJ statement.

On Monday, May 4, the Russian news agency RIA "Novosti" reported that a spokesman for the Rostov Region Department of Internal Affairs said police were not looking into the possibility that Yaroshenko was attacked. "The trauma sustained by the journalist exhibits an exclusively domestic character," an unnamed spokesman at the Department's press office told the RIA "Novosti".

"We are disturbed by the high number of critical journalists attacked and injured in Russia in what law enforcement calls 'accidents'," said CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova. "The federal authorities should launch an independent investigation into the incident."