The Mari-El Assembly refused to accredit journalist «7x7» Dmitry Lyubimov, on October 23 he was not allowed to attend the meeting.
According to Dmitry Lyubimov, an officer of private security in the government house said that the journalist's name was not on the list of invited people and showed a list of the media representatives who were invited by the Information and Public Relations Administration.
Employees of the Mari El Parliament were not available for comments. Some of them referred to the fact that they were busy preparing for the session.
First Deputy Chairman of the State Assembly Vladimir Mukhin wrote that Dmitry Lyubimov's accreditation "was deemed inexpedient". Such a decision was adopted by the State Assembly Committee on Legislation.
"Accreditation is necessary to establish a preferential, favorable regime for journalists and editors to exercise their right to access information," commented Svetlana Kuzevanova, media consultant, the Voronezh Media Rights Protection Center. "For any accreditation, it's enough just to follow the rules of accreditation. I have never heard about "inexpediency" as the basis for refusing in accreditation before. Besides, the very absence of accreditation can not be grounds to forbid a journalist attending an open event held by the authority. Therefore, the State Assembly of the Republic violated the right of a journalist and the editorial board to access information twice."
Head of interregional reception of the Communist Party Sergey Mamaev sent a request to assess the legality of the denial to the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Yuri Chaika.
In 2015, the State Assembly refused to accredit «7x7»'s journalist under the pretext that the documents arrived late, the committee on legislation was no longer in session.
In early October, «7x7» published investigation about how the speaker of the State Assembly, Yuri Minakov, used the company car for personal purposes.
