TUT.BY, BelaPAN, Onliner, and Belarusians and Market journalists covering weekend protests receive 13–15 days of jail

Three hours lat­er, the police drew up admin­is­tra­tive pro­to­cols under under Arti­cle 23.34 (par­tic­i­pa­tion in unau­tho­rized events) and 23.4 (Dis­obey­ing a legal order or request of an offi­cial in the per­for­mance of their offi­cial duties) of the Admin­is­tra­tive code. The court sen­tenced Daria Spe­vak to 13 days of jail, and Vadz­im Zamirous­ki and Use­val­ad Zaru­bin — to 15 days of jail. These admin­is­tra­tive cas­es were heard by judge Ale­na Zhyvit­sa.

«At about 1 p.m., sev­er­al minibus­es with peo­ple in black arrived. I believe, it was the riot police. Two men came up to me, took me by the elbows, and led me to the car. No one intro­duced them­selves — they just said: «Give me the phone,» the jour­nal­ist told the court. — (…) I was doing my job. No one explained me the rea­sons for my deten­tion, and I did­n’t ask. I heard the com­mand: «Get the Press», but we know that hap­pened before. I thought that was to check my press card, as they had done it before.

Dari­a’s deten­tion was caught on video.

Daria Spe­vak’s lawyer drew atten­tion to the fact that the pro­to­col of her ques­tion­ing was not ful­ly com­plet­ed, and there were con­tra­dict­ing facts in the pro­to­col of her deten­tion.

– My client was per­form­ing her pro­fes­sion­al duties. She had a press badge that also allows one to attend mass events.

The lawyer pro­posed to send the case mate­ri­als for revi­sion. After read­ing the pro­to­cols of ques­tion­ing wit­ness­es — police offi­cers Simonchyk and Kush­n­er — who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the deten­tion, the judge made her deci­sion right away: to find Daria Spe­vak guilty and pun­ish her with sev­en days of jail under arti­cle 23.34 and six days — under arti­cle 23.4. In total, Daria will stay behind the bars for 13 days.

Zamirous­ki explained in court that he was clear­ly marked as a jour­nal­ist. «I was wear­ing a turquoise jack­et and a large press ID around my neck. I also had two cam­eras, and it was quite obvi­ous that I was a jour­nal­ist. They did­n’t use force on me.»

How­ev­er, the court found Vadz­im Zamirous­ki guilty on both counts and sen­tenced him to 15 days (10 days for par­tic­i­pat­ing in an unau­tho­rized ral­ly and 5 days for dis­obe­di­ence to police).

TUT.BY and Bela­PAN jour­nal­ist Use­val­ad Zaru­bin also received 15 days of jail. He was detained while cov­er­ing a stu­dent ral­ly on Octo­ber 17.

The court found him guilty under two arti­cles: 23.34 (par­tic­i­pa­tion in unau­tho­rized events) and 23.4 (Dis­obey­ing a law­ful order or request of an offi­cial in the per­for­mance of his offi­cial duties).

Art­siom May­orau, Belaru­sians and Mar­ket, was also found guilty of par­tic­i­pat­ing in an unau­tho­rized mass event and dis­obey­ing a police offi­cer. Judge Zhyvit­sa sen­tenced him to 15 days of jail.

There were obvi­ous con­tra­dic­tions in the mate­ri­als his case. Accord­ing to one report, on Octo­ber 18, at 2.30, he did not com­ply with the police offi­cer’s request to leave the place where pub­lic order was vio­lat­ed. But accord­ing to anoth­er pro­to­col, at this time he was already detained dur­ing a mass event! The judge still gave him 15 days of jail.