Journalist Dzmitry Halko Sentenced to 4 years of Open-Type Jail

Jour­nal­ist and blog­ger Dzmit­ry Halko was found guilty of «vio­lence against police offi­cers» and sen­tenced to 4 years of impris­on­ment in an insti­tu­tion of open type. He was released in the court­room, RFE/RL reports.

The court also ruled to col­lect 850 BYN from Halko as a com­pen­sa­tion for the aggriev­ed.

Halko plead­ed not guilty and plans to appeal against the ver­dict.

Halko’s defend­er Natalia Matske­vich drew the atten­tion of the court that her client is «father of three sons, two of them minors, and are his depen­dants, and this is not a mere for­mal­i­ty. They are real­ly sup­port­ed by him.

Halko is a jour­nal­ist by pro­fes­sion, and, look­ing at his back­ground, he is a brave and tal­ent­ed jour­nal­ist. He is brave, because he per­forms his pro­fes­sion­al duties in dif­fer­ent places, includ­ing dan­ger­ous ones, in par­tic­u­lar, in East­ern Ukraine, and he is tal­ent­ed, because he received pres­ti­gious awards. At the time of the events in ques­tion, he was also a suc­cess­ful jour­nal­ist, because he had a reg­u­lar job with good career prospects at Ekanamich­naya Haze­ta news­pa­per. This is a per­son with no crim­i­nal record… Thus, we can con­clude that per­son­al expe­ri­ence and prospects of the defen­dant, his life plan do not show his desire or inten­tion to come into con­flict with the law and end up in prison as a result of vio­lence against the police.»

The lawyer not­ed that arti­cle 364 of the Crim­i­nal Code has a spe­cial sub­ject-ele­ment cre­at­ing an offence. That means, it pro­vides for lia­bil­i­ty for the actions against police offi­cers only. That is, the crim­i­nal law envis­ages spe­cial kind of pro­tec­tion to mem­bers of law enforce­ment bod­ies.  Sim­i­lar actions made against ordi­nary cit­i­zens lead to admin­is­tra­tive lia­bil­i­ty only,  becom­ing a crim­i­nal offence only if a police offi­cer is the aggriev­ed par­ty.

«How­ev­er, this is not an uncon­di­tion­al priv­i­lege of police offi­cers; this arti­cle is valid only if the actions in ques­tion aimed to hin­der the legit­i­mate actions of police staff,» — said Natalia Matske­vich.

She referred to the cir­cum­stances of the case, which raise doubts on the law­ful­ness of the police offi­cers’ actions, and to the incon­sis­ten­cy of wit­ness­es’ state­ments, etc.

«The con­vic­tion can not be based on assump­tions, » — con­clud­ed the lawyer. She asked to declare Dzmit­ry Halko nit guilty. Full speech of the lawyer can be found in Russ­ian on Face­book page of jour­nal­ist Sabi­na Bry­lo.)

How­ev­er, the court returned a guilty ver­dict.

The sen­tence has not yet entered into force. Dzmit­ry Halko will appeal the deci­sion.

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What does one need to know about the case of Dzmit­ry Halko?

• Dur­ing the tri­al Halko repeat­ed­ly com­plained about abuse and tor­ture, he was «held in a small con­crete room with his hands shack­led in hand­cuffs, with no food or drink.
• What hap­pened? In Novem­ber 2017 in Halko’s Min­sk apart­ment his son Yan was cel­e­brat­ing his birth­day. Alleged­ly, a neigh­bor called the police due to noise. Dzmit­ry opened the door. After that, accord­ing to inves­ti­ga­tors, he had a con­flict with a police­man, whose cell phone got bro­ken dur­ing the acci­dent. In court, the jour­nal­ist admit­ted that while try­ing to «pull police­man Chyrk­ou out of the apart­ment» he «could knock his phone out of his hands,» but said that he «did not remem­ber if that hap­pened or not».
• Halko was report­ed and tried for «using foul lan­guage in pub­lic.» He await­ed the tri­al in the deten­tion cen­ter.
•  After the inci­dent, Dzmit­ry Halko and his son left to Ukrain­ian Mar­i­upol, where his wife and small son Dzmit­ry live. On April 22, Halko was detained on the Belarus-Ukrain­ian bor­der on his way to Min­sk.