Journalist and medical professional Iryna Danylovych was arrested by security forces when she was coming home from work in the Russian occupied territory in Crimea. Danylovych, who reportedly contributes to local news website InZhir Media and Crimean Process, was returning home from her work at a medical centre in the village of Vladyslavivka when she went missing. At 10am that day, six men arrived at the home Danylovych shares with her parents in the village, searched it and confiscated the family’s laptops and phones. Her parents were reportedly told she had been placed under detention for 10 days for allegedly sending information to a foreign country. The men did not identify themselves, drove unmarked cars, and refused her father’s requests to show any court documents authorising the search or his daughter’s detention. Danylovych contributed articles covering local news to InZhir Media under the pseudonym “Pavel Buranov,” according to Andrii Zubariev, director of the human rights organisation Human Rights House Crimea. Her father suspected that his daughter’s detention might be related to her social media posts about the movement of Russian troops in Crimea. According to reports, Danylovych also ran a page on social networks, as well as several blog posts on various sites dedicated to the rights of health workers and health problems on the peninsula.

UPDATE: A Kyiv district court in the Russian-occupied Crimean city of Simferopol extended the detention of journalist Iryna Danilovich until September 6. She is accused of the illegal storage of explosives. Danilovich was previously arrested by unidentified men in April 2022. She had shared news about the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on social media. https://imi.org.ua/en/news/arrest-of-crimean-journalist-iryna-danilovych-extended-until-september-6-i46551

UPDATE: During a court hearing in her case on November 30, Iryna Danylovych said she was beaten and strangled by security forces during her interrogations following her arrest. She also claimed interrogators used psychological pressure against her and threatened to “take her to a forest” if she refused to collaborate. The United Nations special rapporteur on human rights defenders said in a statement it was concerned with the “alleged arbitrary detention” of Iryna Danylovych. The special rapporteur also said her persecution by Russia “appear[s] to be related to her legitimate human rights work and the exercise of the freedom of expression”. https://ru.krymr.com/a/news-krym-zhurnalistka-irina-danilovich-pytki-fsb/32156064.html. https://srdefenders.org/russian-federation-disappearance-detention-criminalisation-of-whrd-irina-danilovich-joint-communication/