High-profile case: Popular news portal chief editor to stand trial soon

The hear­ing is like­ly to take place in the build­ing of Mask­ous­ki dis­trict court as there are larg­er court­rooms, Yuliya Lyasko­va, Spokesper­son for the Belaru­sian Supreme Court, said.

Mary­na Zolata­va remains the only accused per­son in the so-called BelTA case. Oth­er per­sons involved – 14 employ­ees of var­i­ous media out­lets – were released from crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion, but held admin­is­tra­tive­ly liable. In addi­tion to pay­ing off the fines imposed, the jour­nal­ists had to com­pen­sate for loss­es (in each case, the sum ranged from 3,000 to 17,000 Belaru­sian rubles).

She was charged under Part 2 of Arti­cle 425 of the Crim­i­nal Code (inac­tion of an offi­cial). The max­i­mum penal­ty for this arti­cle is 5 years in prison. Ear­li­er, she was sus­pect­ed of ‘unau­tho­rized access to com­put­er infor­ma­tion’ (part 2 of arti­cle 349 of the Crim­i­nal Code), but then the pros­e­cu­tion under this arti­cle was stopped ‘in con­nec­tion with a crime that had not been com­mit­ted’.

It should be recalled that an unprece­dent­ed wave of media work­ers’ arrests start­ed in Belarus in August, 2018.

After Iry­na Akulovich, Direc­tor of the state-run news agency BelTA, had report­ed ‘ille­gal access to their pre­mi­um con­tent’, the Belaru­sian Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee ini­ti­at­ed a crim­i­nal case. Accord­ing to the author­i­ties’ ver­sion, some employ­ees of the above-men­tioned media out­lets have used anoth­er person’s pass­word and got infor­ma­tion owned by the Lukashen­ka mouth­piece over the past two years.

Tut.by jour­nal­ists Hali­na Ulasik, Mary­na Zolata­va, Han­na Kalty­hi­na, Ulyana Babayed, Dzmit­ry Bobryk, Han­na Yer­ma­chonak, Bela­PAN edi­tors Tat­syana Kar­avyanko­va, Iry­na Leushy­na and Andrey Ser­a­da, Deutsche Welle cor­re­spon­dent Paulyuk Byk­ous­ki and the Belaru­sians and Mar­ket jour­nal­ist Alyak­sei Zhukau were detained. As part of the case, four jour­nal­ists of the prop­er­ty por­tal realt.by were inter­ro­gat­ed. A few days lat­er, all the jour­nal­ists were released from cus­tody, but they are still under gag order. All the sus­pects in the BelTA case are banned from leav­ing the coun­try.

As report­ed ear­li­er, Dzmit­ry Bobryk wrote that after a three-hour inter­ro­ga­tion in the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee on August 7, he signed a coop­er­a­tion agree­ment. Accord­ing to him, there were direct threats to him and his rel­a­tives. How­ev­er, after law enforcers real­ized they would get no infor­ma­tion. their pres­sure on him inten­si­fied, Bobryk claimed.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists called the sit­u­a­tion a ‘fla­grant vio­la­tion of free­dom of expres­sion and media free­dom’. Accord­ing to the BAJ, the actions of law enforce­ment agen­cies were ‘exces­sive’.