Siarhei Satsuk arrested and interrogated as suspect in crime

He was arrest­ed in front of his wife Zhan­na, reports NN.BY.

«We went to the hard­ware store in Stsik­l­e­va, near Min­sk. We almost entered the the store, as two peo­ple approached us. I thought at first that he met his friends, but then they start­ed tak­ing him to the side, — said the jour­nal­ists’ wife to NN.

—  I say: Where are you going? He answers: I am being arrest­ed.

The men who arrest­ed him showed id’s of the Depart­ment of Finan­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions. I asked them why they arrest­ed Siarhei, and they said I would be informed lat­er.

Accord­ing to his wife, Sat­suk has­n’t been inves­ti­gat­ing any high-pro­file issues late­ly. She has no idea of what could be the rea­son for his arerst.

A duty attor­ney was invit­ed for Sat­suk’s inter­ro­ga­tion already after clos­ing hours.  This prob­a­bly means that the jour­nal­ist was inter­ro­gat­ed as a sus­pect.

Lat­er the police con­firmed that Sat­suk was  inter­ro­gat­ed as a sus­pect in a crim­i­nal case in the pres­ence of a duty attor­ney.

Siarhei Sat­suk is known for his inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism. His last high-pro­file inves­ti­ga­tion was about pro­cure­ment of Eupen­ta vac­cine that was unreg­is­tered at the time.

In August 2019 Sat­suk told Bela­PAN that he had received threats because of his activ­i­ties .

— After the first of two arti­cles on cor­rup­tion, where Medved­sky was men­tioned, I was approached by an unex­pect­ed per­son. I will not reveal his name yet. He put it blunt­ly: if I did­n’t stop, I would be either killed, or jailed, — Sat­suk said.

March 23, 2020 EJ.BY pub­lished an arti­cle by Sat­suk «Who is spread­ing pan­ic around the coro­n­avirus, the pres­i­dent or web­sites and chan­nels?». In the arti­cle, the author ques­tioned the offi­cial sta­tis­tics on COVID-19 in Belarus.

Siarhei Sat­suk is a mem­ber of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists Pre­vi­ous­ly he was edi­tor of the law, inci­dents and inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism sec­tion of BDG.