Criminal proceedings against two journalists in ‘BelTA case’ stopped

Kar­avenka­va told Bel­sat that she had paid the entire amount set by the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee for com­pen­sa­tion — about 5,000 rubles.

In addi­tion to dam­age com­pen­sa­tion, both jour­nal­ists paid a fine of 735 BYN (30 basic units) each.

Last week, the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee grant­ed the same requests from the Deutsche Welle cor­re­spon­dent Paulyuk Bykows­ki and the edi­tor of the Realy.by por­tal Uladzis­lau Kulet­sky.

Now the jour­nal­ists are in the sta­tus of wit­ness­es.

On August 7–9, the offices of Tut.by and Bela­PAN were searched and a dozen jour­nal­ists were detained. They spent sev­er­al days in the tem­po­rary deten­tion cen­ter in the Akrestsi­na street.

On August 27, the major­i­ty of the sus­pects were banned from leav­ing the coun­try.

Now jour­nal­ists are fac­ing prison sen­tences and fines, the amount of set com­pen­sa­tion ranges from 3,000 to 17,000 BYN.

The Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee sus­pects them of unau­tho­rized access to BelTA’s com­put­er infor­ma­tion. Inde­pen­dent ana­lysts are con­vinced that the case is an attempt by the author­i­ties to intim­i­date and take con­trol of the main non-state media, and even call the “BelTA case” the Tut.by case.

Criminal Charges Against Journalists Bykouski and Kuletski Dropped +DOCUMENT

Maryna Zolatava, Chief Editor of TUT.BY Charged Under “BelTA case”

Stand Up for Journalists!