Criminal Charges Against Journalists Bykouski and Kuletski Dropped +DOCUMENT

The Deutsche Welle cor­re­spon­dent in Belarus was one of 14 defen­dants in a crim­i­nal «BelTA case».

Also, the inves­tiga­tive com­mit­tee dropped the crim­i­nal charges Uladzis­lau Kulet­s­ki, chief edi­tor of the realt.by.

Arti­cle 86 of the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Code of Belarus pro­vides for exemp­tion from crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty in con­junc­tion with the impo­si­tion of admin­is­tra­tive sanc­tions This applies to per­sons who have com­mit­ted a crime of no seri­ous pub­lic threat for the first time, and who cov­ered the dam­age or payed back the pro­ceeds of crime, or undid the dam­age in oth­er way.

Pho­to by Pauliuk Byk­ous­ki

On August 7–9, the police searched the offices of TUT.BY, Bela­PAN news agency and oth­er media out­lets, as well as jour­nal­ists’ pri­vate apart­ments.

The author­i­ties detained Mary­na Zolata­va, chief edi­tor of TUT.BY, TUT.BY’s edi­tors Han­na Kalty­hi­na, Hali­na Ulasik, and Han­na Yarma­chonak, 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 behind bars. Most of them are under trav­el restric­tions.

The Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee pros­e­cutes the jour­nal­ists for unau­tho­rized access to com­put­er infor­ma­tion of BelTA, state-owned news agency. Inde­pen­dent ana­lysts are con­vinced that BelTA case is an attempt to intim­i­date and take the lead­ing non-state media under con­trol. The jour­nal­ists are fac­ing fines and even jail terms.