Journalist Beaten in Court Building

The jour­nal­ist of TUT.by por­tal was stand­ing out­side the court­room where the case of graf­fi­tists was con­sid­ered. He saw that two peo­ple – Pavel Siarhei and Max­im Shyt­sik were tak­en force­ful­ly out of the court room, and he start­ed to record it with a video cam­era. He was detained togeth­er with the activists.

Accord­ing to the HRC Vias­na, the detainees were beat­en straight in the adja­cent room – the sounds were heard in the court­room. They were tak­en to the police depart­ment, charged with art. 24.1 (con­tempt of court) and art. 23.4 (dis­obey­ing law­ful demands of offi­cials). Then the detainees were tak­en to the Frun­zen­s­ki dis­trict court. Pavel Dabravol­s­ki was fined for 45 basic amounts (9 450 000 rubles) (under arti­cles 23.4 and 17.1 (hooli­gan­ism) — cor­rect­ed), Pavel Siarhei – for 50 basic amounts (10 500 000 rubles). The judge was Maria Yerokhi­na, the wit­ness – the police offi­cer Siarhei Kavalchuk, who is said to have tak­en part in the beat­ing.

Pavel Dabravol­s­ki says his cell phone was ceased, all data were delet­ed. Sev­er­al employ­ees of the spe­cial forces knocked him down and beat with legs for 20 min­utes, he said. The reporter not­ed he had his press badge on, and the police offi­cers saw it.