“Trivial revenge and desire to demonstrate their control.” Yan Rudzik comments on trial

“All this looks like a cheap show for idiots,” Yan Rudzik shared with the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists.

“I only know the tri­al date and the charges,” he not­ed. “No one tried to con­tact me, nei­ther the inves­ti­ga­tors nor the prosecutor’s office. I have even received no mes­sages from the lawyer I was alleged­ly assigned by the state. That is why I am con­vinced that it is triv­ial revenge, a desire to show that they remem­ber every­thing and that severe pun­ish­ment is sure to befall the ene­mies of the regime.”

Stsi­a­pan Put­si­la and Yan Rudzik live and work in Poland, their cas­es were inves­ti­gat­ed with­in “spe­cial pro­ceed­ings” in their absence. Raman Prata­se­vich has been under house arrest in Min­sk for over a year and a half.

Prata­se­vich has not been sum­moned for the 16 Feb­ru­ary ses­sion. Are the author­i­ties real­ly ready to grant him amnesty for coop­er­a­tion?

“It’s dif­fi­cult to make any assump­tions, he may have already been reclas­si­fied as a wit­ness,” Yan Rudzik admit­ted in a con­ver­sa­tion with the BAJ mon­i­tor­ing ser­vice.

Raman Prata­se­vich and his girl­friend Sofia Sape­ga were detained in May 2021 after the forced land­ing of a Ryanair plane at Min­sk air­port. The for­mer Nex­ta edi­tor quick­ly became a “pup­pet” in the hands of the law enforcers and start­ed appear­ing on state-run TV and at press con­fer­ences orga­nized by gov­ern­ment agen­cies. But it seems he nev­er received the promised indul­gen­cies for “sin­cere repen­tance.” Prata­se­vich stays under house arrest, Sofia Sape­ga has been sen­tenced to 6 years of impris­on­ment, and his for­mer asso­ciates are to be tried under “spe­cial pro­ceed­ings” and risk being stripped of their prop­er­ty and Belaru­sian cit­i­zen­ship.

The three defen­dants were charged with incit­ing social hatred, orga­niz­ing mass riots and instruct­ing oth­ers to par­tic­i­pate in them, orga­niz­ing group actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order, encour­ag­ing takeover of pow­er, ter­ror­ism, or oth­er actions aimed at harm­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty, estab­lish­ing and head­ing an extrem­ist for­ma­tion, libel­ing and pub­licly insult­ing the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus.

Stsi­a­pan Put­si­la and Yan Rudzik were addi­tion­al­ly accused of con­spir­a­cy to take pow­er by uncon­sti­tu­tion­al means, financ­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties, and dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus.

Final­ly, Stsi­a­pan Put­si­la was indi­vid­u­al­ly charged with orga­niz­ing the activ­i­ties of a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. The Pros­e­cu­tor General’s Office filed a claim for com­pen­sa­tion of prop­er­ty dam­age of over $11,8 mil­lion.

The accu­sa­tion believes that since 2020, con­spir­ing to take pow­er through uncon­sti­tu­tion­al means, the defen­dants have pub­lished mate­ri­als in the Nex­ta and Belarus Golovno­go Moz­ga pages on social media intend­ing to incite people’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in mass riots and armed resis­tance to the author­i­ties, orga­nize unau­tho­rized pub­lic gath­er­ings, incite social hatred, using or threat­en­ing to use vio­lence, spread defam­a­to­ry infor­ma­tion and pub­lish per­son­al data.

Stsi­a­pan Put­si­la and Yan Rudzik were remand­ed in cus­tody in absen­tia, while Raman Prata­se­vich stays under house arrest.