TUT.BY Journalist’s Sentence Remains Unchanged, Borisevich Will Walk Free In May

The appeal hear­ing was sched­uled for 2 pm. It was held behind closed doors, only the deci­sion of the Min­sk City Court will be pub­licly announced. At 2.08 pm, the journalist’s lawyers entered the court­room. The appeal con­sid­er­a­tion last­ed about 50 min­utes. At 3.20 pm, a board of judges announced the deci­sion: to leave the sen­tence of Kate­ri­na Bori­se­vich – six months in prison – in force. The court dis­missed the appeal and the com­plaint. This means that in less than a month Bori­se­vich will come back home.

Bori­se­vich par­tic­i­pat­ed in the court hear­ing via video link from the Zhodi­no deten­tion cen­ter. “We will per­son­al­ly dis­cuss whether Kate­ri­na is satisifed or not sat­is­fied with the result,” said one of her lawyers, Mikhail Bod­nar­chuk. “At least we are glad that the appeal was not sat­is­fied.”

On 19 May, it will be six months since the date of the arrest of Kate­ri­na Bori­se­vich. Our col­league Kate­ri­na Bori­se­vich has been in cus­tody for 152 days already. Before that, Katya had nev­er been brought to admin­is­tra­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty in her life, had nev­er been con­vict­ed, has a per­ma­nent place of res­i­dence and work. She is a pro­fes­sion­al and was repeat­ed­ly award­ed for jour­nal­is­tic mate­ri­als, includ­ing by law enforce­ment agen­cies, in 2020 she became the “Jour­nal­ist of the Year” (accord­ing to the human rights com­mu­ni­ty). The charge brought against her falls into the cat­e­go­ry of less seri­ous crimes.

0 ‰ of alcohol case

The crim­i­nal case against Kate­ri­na Bori­se­vich and Arty­om Sorokin was opened on Novem­ber 19, 2020. They were accused of dis­clois­ng med­ical secrets, which, accord­ing to the Pros­e­cu­tor General’s Office, entailed grave con­se­quences. The max­i­mum sen­tence under this arti­cle is three years in prison. Recall that on Novem­ber 13, 2020, an arti­cle was pub­lished by Kate­ri­na Bori­se­vich, in which, with ref­er­ence to med­ical doc­u­ments and a doctor’s com­ment, she stat­ed that no alco­hol was found in Roman Bondarenko’s blood.

Before that, the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee and Alexan­der Lukah­sneko stat­ed the deceased was drunk. The defen­dants remained in cus­tody for three months before the tri­al. First, in the KGB pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­ter, then in the Min­sk pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­ter No. 1 on Volo­darsko­go Street in Min­sk.

The so-called “0 ‰ of alco­hol” case began on Fri­day, 19 Feb­ru­ary. On that day, more than 100 peo­ple came to sup­port Sorokin and Bori­se­vich, few of them man­aged to get into the court­room – most­ly only rel­a­tives, diplo­mats and some col­leagues. Pros­e­cu­tor Lyud­mi­la Iva­nenko peti­tioned to hold the tri­al behind closed doors. The defen­dants’ lawyers, as well as Kate­ri­na and Arty­om them­selves, insist­ed that the case be con­sid­ered open­ly, “so that soci­ety would know what the jour­nal­ist and doc­tor are being tried for”.

Nev­er­the­less, Judge Svet­lana Bon­darenko grant­ed the peti­tion and decid­ed to con­duct the process behind closed doors “in order to avoid dis­clo­sure of med­ical secrets pro­tect­ed by law and data from the pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion”, and also because “the case mate­ri­als con­tain med­ical doc­u­ments, includ­ing those that had not been pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished.”

The case was con­sid­ered behind closed doors, which were guard­ed by uni­formed police offi­cers and plain­clothes­men. On 2 March, Kate­ri­na Bori­se­vich and Arty­om Sorokin heard their ver­dicts. The doc­tor was sen­tenced to two years in prison with a delay of one year and a fine of 1,450 rubles “for divulging med­ical secrets”, he was released in the court­room. Kate­ri­na Bori­se­vich was sen­tenced to six months in prison and a fine of 2,900 rubles.

The doc­tor decid­ed not to appeal the ver­dict, he has already returned to work in the emer­gency hos­pi­tal. Kate­ri­na Bori­se­vich is still in cus­tody: accord­ing to the court deci­sion, the pre­ven­tive mea­sure remained the same. On 12 March, the Min­sk prosecutor’s office filed a protest against the ver­dict “in view of the lenien­cy of the sen­tence imposed”. Kate­ri­na Borisevich’s lawyers also filed an appeal, they insist on the journalist’s inno­cence.