English

Judge rejects request by subway bombing survivor to suspend trial

 

The judge in the trial of Dzmitry Kanavalaw and Uladzislaw Kavalyow, accused of this past April’s subway bombing and a number of other attacks, rejected Monday a victim’s request to suspend the hearing.

Inesa Kruty, who was seriously injured in the subway bombing, wanted the trial to be suspended until the release from custody of her father who initially represented her in court.

The prosecutors opposed the request, while the accused, their defense lawyers and victims voiced no objections, saying that it was up to the judge to decide.

Judge Alyaksandr Fedartsow rejected the motion.

The woman’s father was arrested by police in Minsk last Wednesday. He was charged with aggravated hooliganism for allegedly pouring two jars of urine on the head of a medical doctor as far back as August 17, and placed in a psychiatric hospital on the orders of a prosecutor.

Speaking on the opening day of the trial of Messrs. Kanavalaw and Kavalyow, Mr. Kruty requested the court to postpone the proceedings until the abolition of the death penalty and the introduction of the institution of jury in Belarus.

Mr. Kruty, a physicist by education, was a human rights defender in the early 2000s and faced a charge of insulting Alyaksandr Lukashenka. The case was dropped in 2008. The man was diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia that same year. // BelaPAN