Tkach on police actions in Vienna: "They detained us as terrorists, put knee on my neck". VIDEO
Head of Ukrainska Pravda's investigations department Mykhailo Tkach described how he and camera operator Yaroslav Bondarenko were detained in Vienna. According to him, seven armed masked men smashed the car windows, and one of them pinned the journalist down with a knee on his neck.
He recounted this to Ukrainska Pravda, Censor.NET reports.
Details
Tkach said that he and Bondarenko were driving from one filming location to another. Some 3–5 kilometers from central Vienna, their car stopped at a traffic light, and seven armed masked men ran up to it. They smashed the windows and pointed their weapons at the journalists.
According to Tkach, he immediately raised his hand and said in English that he was a journalist. He and Bondarenko were pulled out of the car, forced to lie face down in the middle of the road, searched and had their hands bound behind their backs with tape.
Tkach says he kept repeating that he was a journalist, but one of the men put a knee on his neck and ordered him to be silent. He was then dragged into a nearby archway and made to face a wall.
"It felt to me as though they were detaining us as terrorists. They did not speak to us at all; there was just this shocking shouting, they were all shouting and pointing weapons at us, and there was essentially no communication," Tkach said.
The masked men did not identify themselves or explain their actions. Tkach saw no identification and noticed no "police" markings, so for the first 30–40 minutes he thought he and his colleague were being abducted. He realized they were police only when he was led out of the archway to patrol cars. The journalist was placed in a separate compartment of a van and driven for about 20 minutes with sirens on.
After the detention, Tkach did not see Bondarenko again. However, he saw glass from the car's shattered window fly into the camera operator's face.
A single cell and a document in German
The journalist was subsequently ordered to strip completely, and his clothes were taken away and later returned. Tkach was weighed and his height measured.
He waited for about two hours without any explanation, although he asked police several times why he had been detained. During this time, a doctor visited him and asked how he was feeling.
He was asked to sign a document in German. Tkach refused because he did not understand what it said. According to him, a police officer became angry and started shouting. The journalist was then taken to two people he believed were investigators. Only then did a substantive conversation begin.
Espionage, a criminal organization and harm to Austria
At the start of the questioning, Tkach was given a document to sign that he understood to be equivalent to a notice of suspicion. It listed three offenses.
- The first was espionage on behalf of Ukrainian military intelligence. The second was participation in a criminal organization. The third, according to him, concerned causing harm to Austria. Bondarenko faced the same allegations.
According to Tkach, law enforcement officers did not explain the basis for these allegations. He himself concluded that there was no evidence against him or his colleague.
"We have, in fact, worked in Vienna many times, always in public places, covering public figures — people about whom information is of public interest. So hearing such wording was a shock to me," he said.
Tkach called what happened "an extraordinary misunderstanding." He suggested that Austrian law enforcement officers may have acted on misleading information supplied by someone.
The first part of the questioning lasted about two hours. The Ukrainian consul then arrived, and the journalist was allowed to speak with him. Tkach told the diplomat about his detention, after which the questioning resumed. He thanked Ukrainian diplomats for their assistance and said that, in his view, their intervention had helped significantly.
Mykhailo Tkach’s detention in Austria
- On October 8, Mykhailo Tkach, head of Ukrainska Pravda’s investigative journalism department, was detained in Vienna while carrying out an editorial assignment related to locating fugitive former Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko.
- The editorial team considers the detention unlawful and demands the journalist’s immediate release and an official explanation of the Austrian law enforcement authorities’ actions. The fate of Tkach’s colleague Yaroslav Bondarenko, who was travelling with him, was unknown when the editorial team issued its statement.
- Earlier, Ukrainska Pravda published Tkach’s investigation into former Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko’s whereabouts in Vienna, where, according to the outlet, he and his wife had registered in Austria’s residence register.
- On October 9, it emerged that Tkach had been released.
