Court to Review Case of Insult against Public Officials

On April 12, the Frun­zen­s­ki dis­trict court of Min­sk found Ali­ak­san­dr Lapit­s­ki guilty accord­ing to arti­cles 368, 369 and 361 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus (pub­lic insult against the pres­i­dent, pub­lic offi­cials and judges while per­form­ing pro­fes­sion­al duties). Ali­ak­san­dr Lapit­s­ki had been send­ing lots of let­ters addressed to the pres­i­dent of Belarus, judges and oth­er pub­lic offi­cials. The court exempt him from serv­ing the penal­ty stat­ing that the 79-year old Min­sk city res­i­dent accom­plished the actions in the state of inad­e­qua­cy. Lapit­s­ki was assigned to psy­chi­atric treat­ment. The court also made a spe­cial rul­ing to TUT.by demand­ing to delete Ali­ak­san­dr Lapitski’s e‑mail box.

The lawyer Natal­lia Matske­vich con­sid­ers the rul­ing in appeal as pos­i­tive. The defen­dant was present dur­ing the appeal, but did not speak. The date of review is expect­ed to be announced with­in a month.

Aleh Volchak, head of the orga­ni­za­tion Legal Aid to Peo­ple (Ukraine) gave a com­ment on the case, telling that the appeal court admit­ted that the case had been heard super­fi­cial­ly.

“The defense proved that the first instance court failed to see suf­fi­cient evi­dence of Lapitski’s guilt; the defense also con­test­ed the med­ical rul­ing about inad­e­qua­cy of the defen­dant. Our view is that the case should be closed at all, because there had been some mis­takes that are impos­si­ble to cor­rect. The inves­ti­ga­tion failed to find the orig­i­nals of the let­ters that Lapit­s­ki had alleged­ly sent to state bod­ies. It is unclear how they had been sent, from what IP-address, if the e‑mail box belonged to Lapit­s­ki him­self.”

Aleh Volchak draws a par­al­lel between the case of Lapit­s­ki and a new admin­is­tra­tive case of an inter­net user tried for insult­ing a pub­lic offi­cial in a com­ment in a social net­work.