14 Journalists Served Official Charges in BelTA Case

Six jour­nal­ists of TUT.BY have already been served offi­cial charges.

Besides that, the charges are served to Bela­PAN’s chief edi­tor Iry­na Leushy­na and its com­men­ta­tor Tat­siana Kar­avenko­va, Deutsche Welle’s cor­re­spon­dent Pauliuk Byk­ous­ki, and chief edi­tor of Realt.by por­tal Uladzis­lau Kulet­s­ki.

Some of the tar­gets of the BELTA case do not want their names to be dis­closed.

Iry­na Leushy­na, chief edi­tor of Bela­PAN news agency, told BAJ after ques­tion­ing by the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee that she had to pay a large amount of dam­ages. She also got back her phone­book and note­books that had been seized after the search.

— They served offi­cial charges. I pled not guilty and refused to answer some ques­tions. In general,we rather had a con­ver­sa­tion than a ques­tion­ing today. Once again, I saw that the inves­ti­ga­tors were well aware of the cir­cum­stances and what was real­ly going on. They had just been ordered to act that way.  Every­one under­stands every­thing.

The total amount that I was pro­posed to pay is more than 12, 000 BYN.

Bela­PAN con­tin­ues to work as usu­al.

All jour­nal­ists received claims for dif­fer­ent amounts of dam­ages.  Each jour­nal­ist choses their own tac­tics.  For exam­ple, accord­ing to the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee, Deutsche Welle reporter Pauliuk Byk­ous­ki is to repay BelTA a lit­tle more than 4,000 BYN.

Byk­ous­ki says he pled guilty and will pay the mon­ey.

«I chose to do that, this is my tac­tics. Cer­tain­ly, I do not per­suade any­one to fol­low my exam­ple,» says the well-known jour­nal­ist and media expert.

On his Face­book page, founder and co-own­er TUT.BY Yury Ziss­er doubt­ed that «cov­er­ing dam­ages for BelTA» would  draw the case to a close.

Also, the media busi­ness own­er claims, the crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings have already brought huge loss­es to Belarus due to the wors­en­ing invest­ment cli­mate.

On August 7 the police searched TUT.BY and Bela­PAN offices and arrest­ed some jour­nal­ists. The author­i­ties detained Mary­na Zolata­va, chief edi­tor of TUT.BY, TUT.BY’s edi­tors Han­na Kalty­hi­na, Hali­na Ulasik, and Han­na Yer­ma­chonak, Bela­PAN’s chief edi­tor Iry­na Leushy­na and its com­men­ta­tor on inter­na­tion­al affairs Tat­siana Kar­avenko­va, Deutsche Welle’s cor­re­spon­dent Pauliuk Byk­ous­ki, and edi­tor of Belorusy i Rynok web­site Ali­ak­sei Zhukau. They all spent sev­er­al days in Akrestsi­na tem­po­rary deten­tion cen­ter. On August 27, most of the sus­pects were banned from leav­ing the coun­try.

The jour­nal­ists and edi­tors received sup­port from the Euro­pean Union, the Coun­cil of Europe, the Unit­ed States, as well as inter­na­tion­al human rights orga­ni­za­tions.

On Sep­tem­ber 25, TUT.BY edi­tor Dzmit­ry Bobryk made a state­ment on his Face­book page.  The jour­nal­ist said, he had expe­ri­enced pres­sure from the state rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the very begin­ning of the inves­ti­ga­tion into the “BelTA case”, who made threats of dis­clos­ing details of his per­son­al life.