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  • Siarhei Satsuk arrested and interrogated as suspect in crime

    Siarhei Satsuk, chief editor of the online publication EJ.BY, was arrested on March 25 by officers of the Department of Financial Investigations.

    Siarhei Satsuk

    He was arrest­ed in front of his wife Zhan­na, reports NN.BY.

    «We went to the hard­ware store in Stsik­l­e­va, near Min­sk. We almost entered the the store, as two peo­ple approached us. I thought at first that he met his friends, but then they start­ed tak­ing him to the side, — said the jour­nal­ists’ wife to NN.

    —  I say: Where are you going? He answers: I am being arrest­ed.

    The men who arrest­ed him showed id’s of the Depart­ment of Finan­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions. I asked them why they arrest­ed Siarhei, and they said I would be informed lat­er.

    Accord­ing to his wife, Sat­suk has­n’t been inves­ti­gat­ing any high-pro­file issues late­ly. She has no idea of what could be the rea­son for his arerst.

    A duty attor­ney was invit­ed for Sat­suk’s inter­ro­ga­tion already after clos­ing hours.  This prob­a­bly means that the jour­nal­ist was inter­ro­gat­ed as a sus­pect.

    Lat­er the police con­firmed that Sat­suk was  inter­ro­gat­ed as a sus­pect in a crim­i­nal case in the pres­ence of a duty attor­ney.

    Siarhei Sat­suk is known for his inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism. His last high-pro­file inves­ti­ga­tion was about pro­cure­ment of Eupen­ta vac­cine that was unreg­is­tered at the time.

    In August 2019 Sat­suk told Bela­PAN that he had received threats because of his activ­i­ties .

    — After the first of two arti­cles on cor­rup­tion, where Medved­sky was men­tioned, I was approached by an unex­pect­ed per­son. I will not reveal his name yet. He put it blunt­ly: if I did­n’t stop, I would be either killed, or jailed, — Sat­suk said.

    March 23, 2020 EJ.BY pub­lished an arti­cle by Sat­suk «Who is spread­ing pan­ic around the coro­n­avirus, the pres­i­dent or web­sites and chan­nels?». In the arti­cle, the author ques­tioned the offi­cial sta­tis­tics on COVID-19 in Belarus.

    Siarhei Sat­suk is a mem­ber of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists Pre­vi­ous­ly he was edi­tor of the law, inci­dents and inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism sec­tion of BDG.

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