A Russian court defended the “dignity” of a blogger who wrote that a Boeing MH17 was shot down by a fighter jet. The blogger himself fled to the Philippines

Moscow’s Cheryomushkinsky court sided with Dutch blogger Max van der Werff in a libel case against Roman Dobrokhotov, editor-in-chief of The Insider.

The court ruled that Dobrokhotov must refute his tweet, as well as pay the Dutchman 50 thousand rubles in compensation and reimburse 150 thousand rubles in legal costs. Van der Werff asked for 2 million rubles in compensation.

“The decision was expected for us,” lawyer Sarkis Darbinyan told The Insider. “We still had certain reasons to believe that we would be able to convince the judge that this claim was far-fetched and unfounded, but, apparently, the expert’s conclusion from the criminal case, in which Dobrokhotov is a witness, influenced the final position of the judge. At least three expert opinions were presented in the case, which differed in opinion. The plaintiff’s experts considered that there was defamatory information regarding van der Werff. I think that the position of the Ministry of Justice changed before the final decision was made.

At the last meeting, the representative of the plaintiff asked for an increase in the amount of compensation for non-pecuniary damage and argued that after the published tweet, her client suffered deep moral suffering. I note that the Dutchman changed his place of residence in the Philippines. All our arguments regarding van der Werff’s involvement in misinformation about the Malaysian Boeing have not been reflected and taken into account at the moment. Let’s see what will be in the final decision, to what extent the judge will assess the circumstances related to the fact that the tweet was written based on the rather high-profile news about the MH-17 crash, ”Darbinyan said.

Recall that in July Dobrokhotov and his parents searched in the libel case. Phones, laptop, tablets and passport were seized from the editor-in-chief of The Insider.

The case was initiated at the request of the lawyer of the Dutch citizen Max van der Werff against unidentified persons under the article on defamation. According to the Internal Affairs Directorate for the South-Western Administrative District of Moscow, an unidentified person in an unidentified place, no later than November 12, 2020, posted a tweet about “the involvement of Dutch citizen Max van der Werff in disinformation about the downed Boeing MH-17” in the Twitter account of user Roman Dobrokhotov.

Formerly The Insider found outthat Max Van der Werff participated in the GRU disinformation project about the downed Boeing in the Donbas.