On Thursday, the District Court of the city of Vilnius continued to examine the criminal case in which the comedian Oleg Šuraevs is accused of defamation, restriction of human freedom of action and illegal collection and disclosure of information about private life.
The defendant, who was questioned in court, stated that by publishing information about the victim Vadim Butrim, he sought to protect himself, as this person had previously abused him, and at the same time he wanted to publicize the fact that the mentioned person obviously supports Russia.
O. Shurayevs, who testified in court, initially recalled the event that took place a few years ago, which resulted in the conviction of V. Butrim. According to the defendant, he had earlier noticed a car with a Russian flag near his house.
“I think the citizen needs to be educated. People shouldn’t have the Russian flag in the car,” said O. Shurayevs, adding that he stuck a sticker on the said car urging to support Ukraine.
As previously announced, V. Butrim, having found the aforementioned sticker on his car, came to O. Shurayev’s house and hit him. The court sentenced V. Butrim to a 9-month prison term for the assault, obliging him to perform 60 hours of community service.
O. Shurayev claimed that V. Butrim, who currently has the status of a victim, simply “invented something”.
If a person thinks that Ukraine is a Nazi symbol for him, then he is a “writer”
“He got a fine, he has no money to pay and he came up with something here,” he noted.
The defendant confirmed that he posted a video on the YouTube video platform called “My story about the fight in the vatnik”. According to O. Shurajev, in the recording he talked about V. Butrim’s life, his family, and his business. According to the accused, he got the impression that V. Butrim does not pay taxes to the state.
“And there are documents in the file that he doesn’t pay anything there,” said O. Shurayevs.
The defendant emphasized that he created the video in order to protect himself, as he had previously been victimized by V. Butrim. Also, O. Shurayevs claimed that he sought to publicize a person who allegedly supports Russia.
“Two things. Above all, I sought to protect myself. Violence has been used against me, and publicity protects. The second goal is to talk about “vatniks”, to publicize them. (…) Vadim clearly supports Russia. That’s what I was told,” explained O. Shurayev.
“If a person thinks that Ukraine is a Nazi symbol for him, then he is a “writer”, the defendant added.
O. Shurayevs stated that he received information that V. Butrim could have committed an administrative offense while repairing cars.
“People said that they did, they paid with black money, there were no checks,” commented the accused.
When asked several times why he decided to make a video about V. Butrim, he said that he wanted to publicize “watniks”.
“Everyone is pro-Russian shit the piece must be made public,” explained the accused.
Prosecutor Šarūnas Šimonis, after quoting this statement of the defendant, asked what other persons described in this way he had made public.
“Remigijiu Žemaitaitis, Igna Vēgėlė, some others shit the piece was hooked on the avenue. (…) Criminals, maniacs, murderers like to pretend to be victims”, answered O. Shurayevs.
The defendant claimed in court that he knew that the victim, V. Butrim, was visiting Belarus. O. Shurajevo said that he suspected that V. Butrim might be engaged in smuggling.
The specialist did not see any threats in the defendant’s speech
Samanta Kietytė, a specialist who analyzed O. Shurajev’s speeches, also testified in court on Thursday. She claimed that she saw humiliating phrases in the comedian’s speech, but she insisted that there were no threats or intimidation elements.
S. Kietytė claimed that, after performing a linguistic examination of O. Shurajev’s speech, she concluded that he used derogatory terms, for example, “jobber”.
The specialist, when asked by the prosecutor about the phrases uttered by O. Shurajev, said that after performing the examination, she did not see any intentions of intimidation or threats in the defendant’s speech.
“There is no intention of intimidation or threat here, it is not reflected in the statements,” said S. Kietytė.
Marina Gušauskienė, the lawyer of the victim V. Butrim, raised the question why the expert’s conclusion does not mention incitement against persons of Russian nationality, because O. Shurayevas uses the word “Russians” when talking about V. Butrim.
Linguistics specialist S. Kietytė said that the accused did not specifically talk about V. Butrim’s origin.
“Specifically, the ethnicity of that person is not discussed,” the specialist said.
Requested a new expertise
On Thursday, the court watched a video made and made public by O. Shurayev, in which he talks about the victim V. Butrim.
After viewing the video, the victim’s lawyer M. Gušauskienė submitted a request to the court to conduct a new linguistic examination of O. Šurajev’s speech.
According to V. Butrim’s defense attorney, S. Kietytė, the specialist who evaluated the defendant’s speech, could have been biased. In addition, M. Gušauskienė also questioned the competence of the specialist.
“After getting acquainted with the content and conclusions of the conclusion, there are reasonable doubts about the expert’s impartiality and professionalism,” said M. Gušauskienė.
The lawyer did not hide that she was surprised that the specialist’s conclusion states that the words “hard worker, pizdabolas” are supposed to be epithets of an evaluative nature.
M. Gušauskienė also claimed that she noticed that the specialist S. Kietytė shares links to the content created by O. Šuraev on the social network Facebook, and actively speaks about Russia’s war against Ukraine.
“This allows us to say that S. Kietytė is subjective,” commented the lawyer.
The court decided that it will speak about M. Gušauskienė’s request to appoint a new language expert for O. Šurajev during the next hearing. It will also be decided on the repeated questioning of linguistics specialist S. Kietytė.
The next court hearing in the case is scheduled for May 15.
Accusations of defamation, restriction of human freedom of action and unlawful collection and disclosure of information about private life
The District Court of Vilnius City started examining O. Šurajev’s criminal case in February of this year.
As previously indicated by the prosecutor Š. Šimonis, O. Shurayevs slandered the victim in a video where he talked about V. Butrim, about the fact that he is engaged in shady business and does not pay taxes.
According to the prosecutor, O. Shurayevas publicly illegally disclosed information about V. Butrim’s private life, that is, he collected and made public data about the victim’s place of residence, car workshops, made public his face image, name and surname.
According to S. Šimoni, the charges of restraining the freedom of human action were brought against O. Shurayev because he stuck stickers agitating in support of Ukraine on D. Butrim’s car.
