Guilty: Zolatava to Pay a Fine and BelTA Costs

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the pros­e­cu­tion did not agree to video record­ing of the ver­dict pro­nounce­ment.

«I have not yet decid­ed whether I will appeal this court deci­sion; you know that Belarus has only 0.2% of acquit­tals. I did not expect on such a sen­tence. I was pleased that the sen­tence was milder than the pros­e­cu­tor request­ed. I want to relax.

I want to thank the jour­nal­ists who were fol­low­ing the case, as well as my fam­i­ly and col­leagues who sup­port­ed me,» Mary­na said after the announce­ment of the ver­dict.

Feb­ru­ary 25 the Zavod­s­ki court of Min­sk fin­ished the hear­ings of a crim­i­nal case against the chief edi­tor of Tut.by Mary­na Zolata­va. Her case was heard by Judge Alexan­der Petrash , who, accord­ing to Vias­na, repeat­ed­ly hand­ed down polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed rul­ings on admin­is­tra­tive deci­sions to promi­nent politi­cians, pub­lic fig­ures and activists.

Mary­na Zolata­va plead­ed not guilty.

Dur­ing the tri­al, the wit­ness­es — Tut.by staff — claimed they had been pres­sured dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion, and the inves­tiga­tive bod­ies demand­ed to slan­der their chief edi­tor.

For exam­ple, the edi­tor of Tut.by Ulyana Babayed told the court:

«The head of the inves­ti­ga­tion team shout­ed at me and demand­ed evi­dence against Zolata­va. My lawyer was not allowed to see me. They did not warn me about my right not to tes­ti­fy.»

The pros­e­cu­tor asked the court for a penal­ty with a fine of 25,500 BYN. The Crim­i­nal Code pro­vides for pun­ish­ment of up to 5 years in prison on the charges of dere­lic­tion of duty.

Mary­na Zolata­va remained the only accused in the “BelTA case”, the oth­er defen­dants — 14 employ­ees of var­i­ous media — were exempt from crim­i­nal charges that had been replaced with admin­is­tra­tive lia­bil­i­ty. In addi­tion to fines, jour­nal­ists were required to pay dam­ages. The amounts of dam­ages ranged from 3 to 17 thou­sand BYN.

On August 7, the police searched the offices of TUT.BY and Bela­PAN and 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 in Akrestsi­na tem­po­rary deten­tion cen­ter.

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