English

Brest Regional Court quashes acquittal of opposition activist

A judge of the Brest Regional Court upheld Thursday an appeal by the chief of the city’s Maskowski district police station against the acquittal of opposition activist Dzmitry Shurkhay on a disorderly conduct charge.

The judge ordered that the case be sent to the district court once again for retrial.

While speaking at the hearing on his appeal, the police chief dismissed as irrelevant contradictory evidence given by police officers at the original trial of the opposition activist, saying that police had to deal with a great number of such offenses and some inaccuracies on their part were only natural.

On June 28, one day before a scheduled "silent protest," Mr. Shurkhay, a coordinator of the Belarusian Christian Democracy party in the Brest region, was arrested by traffic police on Yanka Kupala Street in Brest and taken to a police station.

The following day, a judge of the Maskowski District Court found Mr. Shurkhay guilty of using obscene language in a public place and sentenced him to seven days in jail.

After completing his jail term, Mr. Shurkhay filed an appeal against the sentence with the Brest Regional Court. On July 22, the Court's judge annulled the sentence and sent the case back to the district court for retrial.

On September 2, a judge of the Maskowski District Court found Mr. Shurkhay innocent of disorderly conduct.
According to Mr. Shurkhay, during that hearing, police officers gave contradictory evidence, and the receipt stating that he had paid a fine to the traffic police turned out to be fake.

"The receipts said that I was fined at 12:05 p.m.," Mr. Shurkhay said. "However, 12:40 p.m. was indicated as the time of my arrest. To eliminate the discrepancy, traffic policemen simply altered the receipt to read that I was fined at 1 p.m. The judge said that no experts were needed to see that." //BelaPAN