Voice recorder, microphone, and 4 dayplanners as evidence. Prosecutor asked for 2 years of prison for Andreyeva and Chultsova

After the break, the judge announced the deci­sion: since the dam­age to Min­sk­trans was ful­ly reim­bursed, and the com­pa­ny has no claims, the court decid­ed to dis­miss the civ­il case.

Then the court con­tin­ued to exam­ine the evi­dence in the crim­i­nal case. A large black bag and a box were brought into the court­room, and State Pros­e­cu­tor Ali­na Kasyanchyk pre­sent­ed their con­tents. Accord­ing to the explana­to­ry note, there were evi­den­tiary items in the bag: mobile phones, com­put­ers, flash dri­ves, a play­er, a voice recorder, four day­plan­ners, paper records, a micro­phone, a pow­er bank, a trans­mit­ter, a tri­pod, a blue Press vest, a video cam­era, and cords of dif­fer­ent col­ors.

There were also a piece of white-red-white fab­ric and var­i­ous stick­ers, pros­e­cu­tor Ali­na Kasyanchyk said.

What happened during the second session, on February 16?

On the sec­ond day of the tri­al, the police changed their approach to who would be let into the court­room and who would be left behind the doors. Met­al detec­tors were installed at the entrance to the court­room, and police offi­cers in plain clothes con­tin­ued to claim for hours that the court­room was full.

Dozens of peo­ple, includ­ing jour­nal­ists from var­i­ous media out­lets, wait­ed in the cor­ri­dor and on the stairs of the court for more than three hours. The guys in civ­il clothes con­tin­ued to claim there were no seats in the court­room.

Accord­ing to Ihar Ilyash, the hus­band of Kat­siary­na Andreye­va (Bakhvala­va), the court­room was about half full. Only lawyers, close fam­i­ly, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of diplo­mat­ic mis­sions and four jour­nal­ists from two state TV chan­nels were allowed to come in.

At the hear­ing, they watched frag­ments from the video streamed on Novem­ber 15 from an apart­ment in one of the build­ings on the «Square of Changes». The defense insist­ed on view­ing the entire record­ing, but judge Natalia Buhuk decid­ed to view only frag­ments «for pro­ce­dur­al effec­tive­ness.» These 12 frag­ments formed the basis of the accu­sa­tion. All quotes are report­ed­ly only state­ments of facts. There was only one call to the view­ers — «we urge you to be care­ful»

Also, the court sum­moned Min­sk­trans rep­re­sen­ta­tive Raman Pra­novich, again. Since the fam­i­lies of the jour­nal­ists paid the dam­ages — more than 11,000 BYN, the trans­porta­tion com­pa­ny dropped its civ­il claim against the jour­nal­ists.

What happened during the first session, on February 9?

Accord­ing to the inves­ti­ga­tion, on 15 Novem­ber “moti­vat­ed by greed» and «by pri­or agree­ment» with each oth­er and oth­er uniden­ti­fied per­sons, they orga­nized actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order. Name­ly, they voiced infor­ma­tion on the air, includ­ing «from destruc­tive accounts in social net­works», «gave a pos­i­tive assess­ment» of the events tak­ing place and «gath­ered active par­tic­i­pants who gross­ly vio­lat­ed pub­lic order», «in order to gath­er the crowd that could pos­si­bly counter the actions of law enforce­ment offi­cers».

The crime, the pros­e­cu­tion says, was com­mit­ted with the help of phones, video cam­eras, a tri­pod and Press vests.

Accord­ing to the inves­ti­ga­tion, the Bel­sat stream led to the shut­down of 19 pub­lic trans­port routes — 13 bus, 4 trol­ley­bus and 4 tram routes. Min­sk­trans esti­mat­ed the dam­age at 11,562.14 BYN. The jour­nal­ists trans­ferred this amount to the com­pa­ny’s account.

.Daria Chultso­va refused to tes­ti­fy, so writ­ten case mate­ri­als were read out dur­ing the tri­al.

— I did not call any­one to any­thing, did not orga­nize any­thing, and did not incline any­one to action. There is no evi­dence of ille­gal actions in the case mate­ri­als, no expla­na­tion of what destruc­tive Telegram chan­nels are, and who deter­mined that they are destruc­tive and which exact­ly chan­nels are meant.  I did­n’t shout any slo­gans, I did­n’t go out on the road­way. <…> My agree­ment to pay the dam­age to Min­sk­trans does not mean I admit the guilt. Pay­ment of dam­ages con­firms that I am a decent per­son, and gives me an oppor­tu­ni­ty to do this for the ben­e­fit of the com­pa­ny in order to improve the qual­i­ty of ser­vices.

Katsiaryna Andreyeva (Bakhvalava) considers her case «politically motivated».

— I am absolute­ly inno­cent of the crime that I am accused of, — Kat­siary­na stat­ed in the begin­ning. — I con­sid­er it an act of revenge by the spe­cial ser­vices for my pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties.

Kat­siary­na says, she did not guide peo­ple dur­ing her livestream. She said she could not pos­si­bly do it as there was no mobile Inter­net in the «Square of Changes», so the peo­ple there could not watch Bel­sat stream.