Threatening phone call to Tartu deputy mayor made by elderly woman
The brash threat made against Tartu Deputy Mayor Monica Rand in a telephone call last week, which Rand reported to the police, was made by a female member of the Center Party who is more than 80 years old, Postimees reported on Friday.
Law enforcement and legal authorities decided there is no need to make any arrests or conduct other procedural acts, and the person who made the threat has not yet been interrogated.
An investigation based on the section of the Penal Code dealing with a threat to kill or cause health damage was opened on the basis of an application filed by Rand to the police.
Rand (Centre) said she received the threat aimed at forcing her to step down in a phone call from a fellow member of the Center Party on Nov. 7. The call was preceded by a lengthy and tense period of crisis in the party's Tartu chapter, whose new leadership led by Jaan Toots tried to get Rand to leave her post.
Kretel Tamm, chief prosecutor at the South District Prosecutor's Office, said the police and the prosecutor's office assessed the content of the threat and its seriousness on Nov. 7.
"We took into consideration the victim's description of the phone call in the course of which the threat was made, the conversation that preceded the threat, the personality of the person who made the threat, and that the threat was made in the course of a passionate debate in an emotional state. We arrived at the conclusion that someone's immediate arrest or another kind of forceful interference is not necessary. In assessing the seriousness of the threat, it was also important that the threat was made by a woman over 80 years of age belonging to the same party as the deputy mayor," the prosecutor added.
Artjom Suvorov, a member of the board of the Centre Party chapter for the Tartu area, said that it's still not known to a broader circle of people who made the threat. Rand has not disclosed the name of the person in question to the public.
The protracted crisis in the Tartu chapter of Centre was resolved with brokerage by the party's leader Juri Ratas on the night between Nov. 7 and 8, when Rand promised at the end of an almost five-hour meeting to step down on the first day of 2020.
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Editor: Helen Wright
