Police Suspect Blogger Andrei Pavuk of Bomb Hoax, Ask People Not to Help Him

A fol­low­er of his blog ded­i­cat­ed to the life in Akt­siabrs­ki dis­trict of the Homel region offered help with devices. A few hours lat­er, the police knocked on his doors with the request not to do this.

Yauhen Hryt­sok, a mem­ber of Akt­siabrs­ki com­mu­ni­ty, com­ment­ed on a video in Pavuk’s VK group, that he could give his spare com­put­er to the blog­ger so that Andrei could edit and pub­lish his videos.

“I like and sup­port Pavuk,” Hryt­sok told Bel­sat.

A few hours lat­er, four police offi­cers knocked on his doors. When asked about the pur­pose of the vis­it, the offi­cers said they want­ed to ask Yauhen not to help Andrei Pavuk.

When the blog­ger wrote about the vis­it to the Hryt­soks in social media, for­mer polit­i­cal pris­on­er Mikalai Dzi­adok offered his help.

Andrei Pavuk told BAJ, in the morn­ing of March 20 offi­cers of the enforce­ment depart­ment came to his apart­ment. They want­ed to con­fis­cate a com­put­er mon­i­tor to cov­er the pay­ment of fine under Arti­cle 22.9 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code (coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media with­out accred­i­ta­tion).

«I refused to open the doors because I do not con­sid­er myself guilty. Just a few min­utes lat­er the door­bell rang again — this time it was the police offi­cers from the crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion depart­ment. They did not say what I did wrong, but imme­di­ate­ly began to put hand­cuffs on me. Then they explained that the Min­istry of Emer­gency Sit­u­a­tions received a mes­sage about a bomb in the build­ing on Savet­skaya Street, 57 in Akt­siabrs­ki, which had alleged­ly been sent from my address. I man­aged to call my wife and the police took me to the local Inves­ti­ga­tion Com­mit­tee.

I asked for facts, why I had been detained, and why I had to prove my inno­cence.  They told me that they could not do that. I asked if I could call a lawyer — but they did not allow me and took all my things away.

Inves­ti­ga­tor Art­siom Uhni­avy kept mak­ing phone calls to  con­sult some­one. I was told that they would take me to Homel, then to Babruisk, and that I was sus­pect­ed of a crim­i­nal offense. I was released at about 3.30 p.m.,» Andrei Pavuk remem­bers the events of the day.

He was giv­en a doc­u­ment to sign stat­ing that he was a sus­pect in a crim­i­nal case under Art. 340 Part 1 of the Crim­i­nal Code on the fact of a bomb hoax. The max­i­mum penal­ty for this crime is five years of jail.

The police did not select any mea­sures of restric­tion.

Andrei Pavuk says, he has checked his e‑mail again: there are no let­ters with a bomb hoax in the Sent fold­er.

The blog­ger believes that his deten­tion and a search in his apart­ment are just a rea­son to seize his com­put­er equip­ment and check it for any clues that could lead to crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion.

«I believe they see me as a per­son who can make a dif­fer­ence and change the world around us. I guess that some­thing changed in their atti­tude to my activ­i­ties after the change of the chair­man of the local exec­u­tive com­mit­tee. Well, he even talks to me and pre­tends that he under­stands every­thing. But I see the impact my blog about life in the coun­try­side makes on peo­ple,» says Andrei Pavuk.

Andrei Pavuk is a well-known video blog­ger, a mem­ber of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists. He has a blog in the social media where he crit­i­cizes local author­i­ties.