EU court allows criminal prosecution of individuals for publishing RT materials

For the first time, the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) has allowed private individuals to be held criminally responsible for publishing RT materials. This follows from a press release published on July 2 on the judicial authority's website.

According to the case file, criminal prosecution has been initiated in Germany against three people. According to the investigation, they operated a website on which they posted the content of the TV channel. If found guilty, they face up to five years in prison.

Until now, the ban on broadcasting RT materials in the EU due to the sanctions regime applied only to officially registered operators, under whose control the means of communication are located. However, now the operator status can be assigned by default to any individual who manages an online resource.

The court ruled that the persons who administer the websites with the materials of the TV channel commit a violation of the sanctions legislation, similar to the actions of professional participants in the media communications market.

On May 14, Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the Rossiya Segodnya international media group and RT TV channel, announced that she was going to sue Euronews for ignoring appeals about the publication of a fake video with her participation. Also, Newsweek, after a similar request, only supplemented the publication with a postscript stating that RT considers the video fake.