Riot policeman deliberately shoots at Nasha Niva journalist Natalia Lubneuskaya from 10 meters VIDEO

Журналістку «Нашай Нівы» Наталлю Лубнеўскую паранілі гумавай куляй 10 жніўня.

That evening dozens of riot police­men –pre­sum­ably, Almaz (anti-ter­ror­ist spe­cial forces) — appeared on Kalvaryiskaya street where a peace­ful protest was tak­ing place. Almaz head­quar­ters is locat­ed near­by.

One of the offi­cers stopped 10 meters away from a group of jour­nal­ists in blue Press jack­ets and shot his gun at Natalya.

It was not a ran­dom inci­dent — Nasha Niva got hold of a video show­ing the offi­cer delib­er­ate­ly aim­ing at the jour­nal­ist.

Warn­ing! The video con­tains scenes with open wounds.

Natalia has been stay­ing in hos­pi­tal for over 2 weeks. She has already had a surgery, and might need anoth­er one.  It is not known how long she will have to stay in hos­pi­tal for.

Natalia Lub­neuskaya report­ed the inci­dent to police demand­ing that crim­i­nal charges for caus­ing bod­i­ly harm should be insti­gat­ed. She was inter­viewed by police on August 12 and on August 21. The inves­ti­ga­tors have also received the video of the shot from Nasha Niva.

How­ev­er, the crim­i­nal case has not been strat­ed.

«The exam­i­na­tion of the case is extend­ed for anoth­er month», Natalia was told at he the Frun­zen­s­ki dis­trict depart­ment of the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee. .

Nasha Niva encour­ages law enforce­ment agen­cies to show hon­esty and respon­si­bil­i­ty in per­form­ing their duties. Law enforce­ment bod­ies can eas­i­ly iden­ti­fy the per­son who fired at the jour­nal­ist, in vio­la­tion of the law.  It depends sole­ly on the will of the lead­er­ship of the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs and oth­er law-enforce­ment agen­cies.

We would be grate­ful to the pub­lic, wit­ness­es, cur­rent or for­mer law-enforce­ment offi­cers for help­ing to iden­ti­fy this per­son.

An offi­cer who shoots at civil­ians must be held account­able in accor­dance with the law:

• Abuse of pow­er or offi­cial author­i­ty, com­bined with the use of arms, shall be pun­ished by impris­on­ment for a term up to 10 years.

• Inten­tion­al inflic­tion of bod­i­ly harm of minor grav­i­ty (which is not life threat­en­ing, but caus­ing injury ro health for up to four months), com­mit­ted in a gen­er­al­ly dan­ger­ous way shall be pun­ished by impris­on­ment for a term of up to 5 years.

• Obstruc­tion of the law­ful pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties of a jour­nal­ist is pun­ished by impris­on­ment for up to 3 years.