Newspaper reports arrest of its journalist who wrote article about deadly KGB raid

Jour­nal­ist detained in Moscow over inter­view with class­mate of IT spe­cial­ist shot by KGB agent

Henadz Mazhey­ka, a jour­nal­ist at Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da, was detained in Moscow, human rights activists report.

Accord­ing to Henadz Mazheyka’s moth­er Iry­na, a search in the jour­nal­ist’s apart­ment was car­ried out by KGB offi­cers and last­ed for about two and a half hours. The search war­rant list­ed two arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code: part 3 of Art. 130 (incite­ment to racial, nation­al, reli­gious or oth­er social hatred) and Art. 369 (insult­ing a gov­ern­ment offi­cial). The search was con­duct­ed by some sev­en offi­cers. They were accom­pa­nied by two wit­ness­es (the offi­cers said they were peo­ple they met on the street). Flash dri­ves, stick­ers and badges that were stored from 2001 were seized.

Henadz was not at home dur­ing the search. Pre­sum­ably, at that time he was in Rus­sia.

«The last time I talked to my son was on the after­noon of Sep­tem­ber 30. He was in a hotel in Moscow then,» says his moth­er.

On the night of Octo­ber 1–2, Henadz’s moth­er was called and told that her son had been detained and was being held in the tem­po­rary deten­tion cen­ter in Akrestsin Street in Min­sk.

The arti­cle about the mur­dered IT spe­cial­ist  Andrei Zeltser was signed with the jour­nal­ist’s name, and the pub­li­ca­tion result­ed in the new­pa­per web­site being blocked by the author­i­ties. In the arti­cle, Zelt­ser’s class­mate shared her mem­o­ries of him and spoke pos­i­tive­ly about the mur­dered man. Accord­ing to the edi­tor-in-chief of Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da Vladimir Sun­gorkin, that was the rea­son for the deten­tion of his employ­ee.

Putin’s spokesman con­demned the action and called the block­ing of the Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da web­site a vio­la­tion of free­dom of speech.

Henadz Mazhey­ka has been work­ing for Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da since 2009. He usu­al­ly writes on auto­mo­tive top­ics, arma­ments and the army. On the day when the mate­r­i­al about Zeltser was pub­lished, Mazhey­ka was on duty at the site.

On the night of 11–12 August 2020, Henadz Mazhey­ka worked in the Serabran­ka dis­trict of Min­sk. He, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er, and the dri­ver were pulled out of the car and beat­en by secu­ri­ty offi­cers.