Investigative Committee: BAJ appeal concerning detention of 47 journalists is “abstract”. Case will not be examined

The doc­u­ment described the cir­cum­stances of deten­tion in detail on 4 pages, and pro­vid­ed jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the need to ini­ti­ate crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings under arti­cle 198 of the Crim­i­nal Code.

On Sep­tem­ber 10, the Head of the Depart­ment for deal­ing with appeals of cit­i­zens of the Cen­tral Office of the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mitte respond­ed to the BAJ’ state­ment.

— We would like to inform you that the infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed in the state­ment is essen­tial­ly abstract, there­fore, there are no grounds for the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee to exam­ine it or make a deci­sion in accor­dance with the pro­ce­dure estab­lished by the Code of Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure of the Repub­lic of Belarus, — the let­ter reads.

On August 27, 47 jour­nal­ists were detained by law-enforce­ment offi­cers in Min­sk on Lib­er­ty Square, Inde­pen­dence Square, and Inde­pen­dence Avenue, as well as in Brest.

The police offi­cers arbi­trar­i­ly destroyed the orig­i­nal footage, which was the intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty of jour­nal­ists and mass media. They also threat­ened the jour­nal­ists that they would dam­age or destroy their pro­fes­sion­al equip­ment.