Journalists trying to cover trial in Mahiliou detained and placed in custody

Jour­nal­ists Alexan­der Burak­ou, report­ing for Deutsche Welle, and Uladz­imir Lapt­se­vich (6tv.by) were grabbed by riot police after fam­i­lies and friends of the defen­dants in the so-called «Tikhanovs­ki-Statke­vich group» case had left the cour­t­house.

Alexan­der Burak­ou was tak­en to the Lenin­sky dis­trict police depart­ment of Mahil­iou, where the police charged him under Arti­cle 24.23 Part 3 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code, with alleged repeat­ed (with­in a year’s time) par­tic­i­pa­tion in an unau­tho­rized event». The jour­nal­ist faces a fine of up to 200 basic val­ues or 15 to 30 days of arrest.

Arti­cle 24.23 was intro­duced into the Admin­is­tra­tive Code only in March of 2021. More­over, last time Burak­ou was tried for alleged vio­la­tion of the law on mass events more than a year ago — on May 8, 2020. It is weird that the police still haven’t learned to draw up reports under this «pop­u­lar» arti­cle prop­er­ly.

 Jour­nal­ist Uladz­imir Lapt­se­vich was detained under the same charges.

Both jour­nal­ists were tak­en to local deten­tion cen­ter and will stay there until the court hear­ing. Lenin­s­ki dis­trict police depart­ment did not let the fam­i­ly to bring food and clothes for Burak­ou.

The hear­ings are like­ly to take place via Skype on May 13 or 14.