Police beat Belsat cameraman Zmitser Soltan

After the release, Soltan told the fam­i­ly and jour­nal­ists about being tor­tured and bat­tered by police­men. Accord­ing to the cam­era­man, they hit him in the stom­ach with trun­cheons, some bruis­es are still seen.

On Feb­ru­ary 10, jour­nal­ist Lyubou Lun­y­o­va and cam­era­man Zmitser Soltan were tried in Savet­s­ki dis­trict court of Min­sk. They were sen­tenced to 10 and 15 days in jail respec­tive­ly. The two cas­es were con­sid­ered by judge Mary­na Fyo­dar­a­va. Lun­y­o­va and Soltan were charged under Arti­cle 17.1 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offences (‘pet­ty hooli­gan­ism’).

The Min­sk police detained the Bel­sat crew on Mon­day when they were work­ing not far from the Phil­har­mon­ic on Feb­ru­ary 8. The pro­to­cols drawn upon on Lun­y­o­va and Soltan were iden­ti­cal. Accord­ing to them, the duo alleged­ly ‘expressed dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the work of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Inte­ri­or Min­istry, inter­fere with the police offi­cers’ activ­i­ty, talked loud­ly, called police­men pun­ish­ers and fas­cists’ in the hall of Savet­s­ki Dis­trict Depart­ment of Inte­ri­or. Police­man Miki­ta Bel­s­ki was wit­ness­ing against the Bel­sat con­trib­u­tors in court.