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Minsk City Court upholds jail sentences against two Radio Racyja reporters

 

A judge of the Minsk City Court on Tuesday rejected appeals against jail sentences imposed last month on Henadz Barbarych and Alyaksandr Yarashevich, reporters for Radio Racyja, a Polish-based radio station.

On April 29, Judge Kiryl Palulekh of the Savetski District Court in Minsk found the journalists guilty of failing to comply with lawful orders of police officers.

Henadz Barbarych, a former BelaPAN staff writer, and Alyaksandr Yarashevich, a freelancer for BelaPAN, were arrested in Minsk on the night of April 26 following the “Charnobylski Shlyakh” (Path of Chernobyl) demonstration, an annual event staged by opposition and environmental groups to mark the anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident.

Given that the journalists were held in custody since their arrest, they were released later on April 29.

“The ruling of Judge Valery Kamisaraw was expected,” Mr. Yarashevich commented to BelaPAN. “He ignored numerous contradictions in witness testimonies. We were arrested on Kazlova Street, but the police witnesses claimed that that had happened on Masherava Avenue. In addition, the police officers didn’t remember who had arrested me and who had arrested Barbarych, who had showed us his ID and who had led us to the police vehicle.”

Mr. Yarashevich said that he and Mr. Barbarych might appeal their jail terms all the way to the Supreme Court of Belarus and complain to the UN Human Rights Committee, if necessary.

During their trials in the Savetski District Court, Messrs. Barbarych and Yarashevich said that they had been arrested by three men in civilian clothes who had followed them onto a public bus at a stop near the demonstration venue and had got off the bus together with them.

The men came up to the journalists and ordered them to show their ID, saying they were police officers. According to Messrs. Barbarych and Yarashevich, after they produced their journalist’s cards, the men ordered them to go with them to a police station and they obeyed without resisting. They got into a car that pulled up and were driven to the Savetski district police station.

Police officers Syarhey Revut, Uladzimir Hrablyuk and Alyaksey Karpovich claimed at the hearings that while they while patrolling an area, they spotted two “young men” who behaved suspiciously as they were “looking around” and “exchanging looks with each other.” The officers insisted that after Messrs. Barbarych and Yarashevich were ordered to show their IDs, they attempted to run away and resist their arrest, “sitting down on the ground and swinging their arms.” According to Officer Hrablyuk, Mr. Barbarych grasped him “by the sleeves and arms.”

On May 6, Mr. Yarashevich was arrested again while walking from the detention center on Akrestsina Street, where he had met opposition activists released from the jail. He was charged with disorderly conduct and failure to comply with "lawful orders of authority figures" and given a 12-day jail sentence. On May 21, a judge of the Minsk City Court on Tuesday rejected his appeal against the sentence. // BelaPAN