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Nation    

Opposition accuses official of cover up
Journal Staff Report

KIEV, May 21 – Opposition groups on Tuesday accused Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko of trying to cover up a recent attack on reporters amid evidence that the attacking mob may have been hired by the ruling Regions Party.

Zakharchenko was summoned to Parliament on Tuesday under pressure from opposition groups that sought a report about who was behind street clashes and the attack on reporters on Saturday.

Instead, Zakharchenko spent most of his 15-minute report to lawmakers assigning blame to opposition groups for the clashes and pledging that police will investigate the violence.

Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Rybak later quickly shielded Zakharchenko from any further questions from opposition groups by suspending the discussion.

Arseniy Yatseniuk, the leader of the opposition Batkivshchyna party, against accused the Interior Ministry of plotting and monitoring the street clashes as part of its preparation for the next presidential election in March 2015.

"The provocation was organized by the Interior Ministry, which had a special team set up and working within the ministry to discredit and to fight the opposition groups,” Yatseniuk said. “SBU security service agents and other law enforcers were deployed to allay Yanukovych’s personal fear of opposition.”

Yatseniuk said the opposition groups will conduct their own investigation through creation of a special commission in Parliament on Thursday.

"In order to clarify all the circumstances of the attack we have submitted a draft resolution to create the commission,” Yatseniuk said. “Tomorrow it will be reviewed by committee and Thursday the first thing it will be submitted for vote in Parliament.”

The opposition groups will also press for summoning up to Parliament the head of SBU security service and the Prosecutor General for grilling over the street clashes and police inaction to stop them on Saturday.

“The prosecutor general’s office should give a clear answer what happened at the Interior Ministry and who was the organizer [of the clashes] and why didn’t police act to stop them,” Yatseniuk said.

Zakharchenko, while reporting on the street violence that too place on Saturday, repeatedly mentioned groups of opposition protesters, while never mentioning a mob that had attacked the reporters.

The mob, later identified by reporters as martial arts fighters from Bila Tzerkva in the Kiev region, were first seen guarding the Regions Party’s ‘anti-fascist rally’ in downtown Kiev before causing trouble several blocks away near a rally of opposition groups.

This later escalated into the attack on two reporters, Olha Snitsarchuk of Channel 5 television and Vlad Sodel, a photographer with Kommersant newspaper, just outside the Kiev police headquarters.

Police did not intervene when the mob had been approaching and threatening the reporters, fueling further suspicions that the attack may have been staged by the authorities.

Yatseniuk, citing unidentified police sources, on Monday accused Andriy Kliuyev, the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, of supervising the "special operation" involving the street clashes. (tl/ez)




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