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Computers of independent journalists sent for new examination

The computer equipment seized from independent journalists in Minsk’s police raids staged earlier this year have been sent for another examination, BelaPAN reports.

Svyatlana Kalinkina, Iryna Khalip, Maryna Koktysh and Natallya Radzina were targeted in the raids that were officially staged in connection with a defamation investigation into the coverage of a high-profile "hunting" case pitting the police against the Committee for State Security (KGB).

On April 28, the four journalists were summoned to appear at Minsk’s Pershamayski district police station to meet with Alyaksandr Pusew, a senior investigator at the Homyel police department.

At a news conference held in Minsk on Thursday, Ms. Kalinkina, editor of the pro-opposition newspaper Narodnaya Volya, said that no information material to the defamation case had been found on her computer.

“Neither was evidence that I administer or edit the Charter’97 or Belorussky Partizan news site found as a result of the examination,” Ms. Kalinkina said. “But the investigator believes that another examination should be carried out.

“Even a DVD of new House MD episodes was taken for the examination," said Ms. Koktysh, a journalist at the Narodnaya Volya.

Ms. Koktysh said that earlier in the day she met with an official of the interior ministry’s internal security department who questioned her over papers discovered in a raid on her home.

The papers featured routine statistical data on shortages of district police officers and crimes rates in the regions (the information that can be found on many websites), but the official said that this was confidential information and a probe had been opened, Ms. Koktysh said.

“I refused to provide any explanation,” she added.

Ms. Radzina, a coordinator of the Charter’97 site, said that the police did not find any information defaming KGB officer Ivan Korzh on the eight computers seized from the site`s Minsk-based office, “but they found more than 3,000 files containing the words ‘dictatorship,’ ‘European Parliament’ and ‘Jerzy Buzek.”

Ms. Radzina said that she had been showed a warrant authorizing law-enforcement officials to hack the computers to access data on online communications.

“There isn`t any criminal case,” Ms. Khalip stressed. “They have just waged a war under this guise to eliminate journalists and opposition websites. Today they want to kill us morally. Tomorrow they may kill us physically.”

The hunting case, in which four high-ranking police officials were involved, led to a series of revelations about corrupt practices within the police and security agencies and Alyaksandr Lukashenka even publicly accused one of the officials of having hunting lodges built illegally in Zhobin.

She trial of the four officials ended on February 17, with the Supreme Court sentencing three to prison terms of three to four years and exempting the fourth accused from criminal liability under last year’s amnesty law.

Last year Ivan Korzh, the then chief of the KGB Homyel regional department who was appointed by Alyaksandr Lukashenka this past January to head the KGB Hrodna regional department, went to court over allegedly defamatory remarks about him that appeared on the Charter’97 news site in a story run under the headline “Relatives of arrested policemen complaining about dictatorship.”