Prosecutor’s Office sends BelaPAN case to court
The case against journalists Andrei Aliaksandrau and Iryna Zlobina, as well as BelaPAN editor-in-chief and director Iryna Leushyna and former agency director Dzmitry Navazhylau, has been sent to court by the Minsk Prosecutor’s Office.
According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, they are charged with:
- assistance to some 260 people in participation in protests by paying their fines and other detention-related bills (Aliaksandrau, Zlobina) (Part 2 of Article 342);
- assistance to the By_help Foundation in activities aimed at harming national security (Aliaksandrau, Zlobina) (Part 1 of Article 356);
- creating “a group of citizens consisting of BelaPAN employees and other people who carried out extremist activities in 2020–2021” in the form of “disseminating materials with signs of extremism”, as well as “management of such formation” (Aliaksandrau, Navazhylau, Leushyna) (Part 1 of Article 361–1 of the Criminal Code);
- evasion of the taxes of ZAO BelaPAN (damage amounting to some $140,000) (Aliaksandrau, Navazhylau) (Part 2 of Article 243 of the Criminal Code).
Repressions against journalists in Belarus, 2022 (chart)