KIEV, July 29 (RIA Novosti) – A Russia photojournalist and three activists from the radical feminist movement Femen have been freed by a Kiev court after being detained Saturday following an attempt to stage one of the group’s trademark topless protests, city police said Monday.
Freelance photographer Dmitry Kostyuchkov was taking pictures on Saturday evening, as the three women were attempting to protest the Ukrainian capital’s celebrations of the 1025th anniversary of the Christianization of Kievan Rus, a medieval state that comprised parts of what is now Russia and Ukraine, attended by top Russian and Ukrainian officials.
According to the police, the four were detained for hooliganism and disobeying police orders, but were released Sunday.
“They were fined and released by a court order,” a Kiev police spokesman said on Monday.
The women were fined around $11 for hooliganism, while Kostyuchkov, whose work has appeared in the New York Times, was fined some $17 for disobeying police orders.
The police spokesman also denied the accusations that the law enforcement officials had used violence against the detained.
“You know Femen, they often say that they are being beaten, but, of course there was nothing,” the spokesman said.
The group claims in a statement on its website that the four were brutally beaten, forced into a car and “kidnapped.”
Video footage of the four perpetrators walking out of the court building released online showed Kostyuchkov with a bruised faced and a bandage on his forehead.
Earlier last week, another Femen activist was assaulted at a Kiev café, the group said. An unknown male attacker reportedly punched the woman in the face several times, took her laptop and walked away.
Femen also claimed late Thursday its “ideologue” Viktor Svyatsky was assaulted near the group’s headquarters by unidentified thugs and was later hospitalized with a broken jaw.
Femen has previously carried out protests against the Russian Orthodox Church. Last year, its members used a chainsaw to cut down a wooden crucifix in Kiev, in protest at what it claims was the church’s complicity in the trial of Russian feminist punk group Pussy Riot.
