The Oktyabrsky District Court of St. Petersburg sent journalist Maria Ponomarenko to jail, accused of spreading “fakes” about the Russian army because of a post on a Telegram channel. She faces up to 10 years in prison. Her daughter is a witness in the case.

The court considered that it would be impossible to ensure the appearance of Ponomarenko at the next hearings without detention, as well as to limit contacts with witnesses in the case, Sota reports. The journalist was sent to a pre-trial detention center for two months.

As previously reported by the St. Petersburg edition of “Paper”, the investigator said that one of the witnesses in the case is the minor daughter of Ponomarenko.

In this regard, according to the investigation, mother and daughter cannot live together, since Ponomarenko “may influence” the child.

“They took away personal money, took away a personal phone, a laptop from a child. They conducted a search without legal representatives, knowing full well that the father was on a business trip and would return in May,” Maria Ponomarenko told SOTA.

At the same time, Ponomarenko’s lawyer Sergei Podolsky told the BBC that there is no information in the case file about the interrogation of the child and it is not yet clear what actually happened: “It was a unilateral statement by the investigator without providing documents that someone interrogated the daughter of Maria, and she allegedly partially testified against her mother. We do not particularly believe in this. If this is so, we would, of course, like to know how this interrogation was legalized, whether the teacher was present, whether the lawyer was present. Legal representatives [parents] obviously they were not present, because they were not in the city, neither father nor mother at that moment. There are very big questions for this interrogation.”

“Moreover, the investigator said that it was necessary to protect the mother from communicating with her daughter. I almost fell there,” Podolsky added.

According to lawyer Olga Gnezdilova, interviewed by the BBC as an independent expert, bringing children as witnesses against parents is “a monstrous thing.” Article 51 of the Constitution establishes that no one is obliged to testify against himself, his spouse and close relatives.

“Children and parents are close relatives,” explains the lawyer. “Therefore, of course, children should not testify against their parents. Firstly, this destroys family relationships, and the second problem is that children are much more suggestible than adults, and they can be deceived, they can be manipulated.”

“The question here is what position the state puts them in,” says Gnezdilova. “Should these children themselves know this article and refuse to testify. Obviously, they may not be ready for this [interrogation], but here, of course, the duty of the state not only to explain, but in general not even to put such a question before the children.

Ponomarenko was detained in St. Petersburg on April 24. She was accused of spreading “fakes” about the Russian army because of a post on a Telegram channel with 1,500 subscribers that was about Mariupol, her lawyer said.

A criminal case was opened under Part 2 of Art. 207.3 of the Criminal Code: this article provides for punishment up to 10 years in prison .

Ponomarenko stated in court that she was one of the organizers of a public campaign in defense of orphans in the Altai Territory (she had recently moved to St. Petersburg), because of which she received threats, including from the district police officer, who made a negative description of her.

In St. Petersburg, the artist Sasha Skochilenko is also being tried in the case of “fake news” about the army. On April 13, the court sent her to a pre-trial detention center for replacing price tags in a supermarket with leaflets with information about what is happening in Mariupol.

Skochilenko acknowledged the distribution of leaflets, but refused to accept that she had disseminated false information.

To keep getting BBC news, subscribe to our channels:

Download our application: