Criminal charges pressed against journalist Dzianis Ivashyn

The jour­nal­ist was detained in his apart­ment at about 6 p.m., on March 12. Before that, a blue mini­van parked near the apart­ment block.

The seach of his apart­ment con­tin­ued late into the night. Also, the police searched his moth­er’s home, and, on March 15, they arrived with a search war­rant to the home of his 95 y.o. grand­moth­er.

— They searched my house and our fam­i­ly sum­mer cab­in. They seized all infor­ma­tion car­ri­ers (phones, lap­tops, com­put­ers), sim-cards, bank cards, books, note­books, mon­ey and lit­tle things like flags, badges, busi­ness cards, etc. They were very inter­est­ed in every­thing that had to do with Ukraine, although the search war­rant is for alleged dis­tri­b­u­tion of per­son­al infor­ma­tion. Now Dzia­n­is is in prison №1 of Hrod­na, — his wife Vol­ha Ivashy­na said.

The jour­nal­ist is placed in the deten­tion cen­ter.

Ivashyn is an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist. In Belarus, he workes with the Novy Chas news­pa­per. The last arti­cle that he pub­lished in Novy Chas was about for­mer Ukrain­ian «Berkut» (riot police) offi­cers suc­cess­ful­ly land­ed  jobs in Belaru­sian police forces.

He is also a jour­nal­ist and edi­tor of the Belaru­sian ser­vice of Inform­Na­palm web­site.

Cur­rent­ly, 11 Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists are in cus­tody (Siarhei Hardziye­vich, jour­nal­ist of 1reg.by, is under house arrest).

BAJ demands the imme­di­ate release of Dzia­n­is Ivashyn and all jour­nal­ists!

Address for let­ters: Prison № 1. 230023, Grod­na, st. Kira­va, 1