After Hasty Detention and Release, Journalist Still Goes to Questionings

How is your case going? Are there any inves­tiga­tive actions?

Yes, for­mal­ly. I peri­od­i­cal­ly go to ques­tion­ings, and the ques­tions are all the same, I am ques­tioned about some details that have already been explained. It’s becom­ing more rare. It seems they already would be hap­py to close the case some­how. It gained an unex­pect­ed pub­lic out­cry in the West and in Rus­sia as I have many cor­re­spon­dents in dif­fer­ent coun­tries.

I don’t know at all what they want­ed to get. Any exam­i­na­tion will show that my mate­ri­als are based on open sources, so this is fruit­less. I think they are look­ing for a pos­si­bil­i­ty now to soft­en the case.

My lawyer is a very accu­rate man and advis­es on cer­tain actions to improve my sit­u­a­tion. For instance, the charges were changed which made my release ossi­ble under recog­ni­zance not to leave the coun­try. Lawyers hope that, bear­ing in mind the age and health con­di­tion and the fact that I have not done any harm, the charges might be dis­missed with some time.

Any jour­nal­ist might have fears over per­spec­tives to get in a sit­u­a­tion as such. Is there a way to get secured against it, and is it worth secur­ing at all?

I think it is impos­si­ble to get secured at all. I have worked on mil­i­tary issues for around 20 years. Thanks to crit­i­cal arti­cles I have quite a lot of “friends” in a num­ber of agen­cies – like the Defense Min­istry, at mil­i­tary indus­tries, and I sup­pose they don’t feel favor­able towards me. They don’t want to make infor­ma­tion pub­lic even when it is legal.  /…/

I did not expect absolute­ly, so I was quite unset­tled.

But, in prin­ci­ple, none can be secured against such things. It might be the case with some inter­na­tion­al rela­tions, in poli­cies of a cer­tain agency pur­su­ing its own inter­ests etc. Cor­re­spon­dents who I work with also might be inac­cu­rate or loose and unwill­ing­ly put one’s part­ner at risk. As I not only write pub­li­ca­tions, I make sur­veys, infor­ma­tion­al notes, ref­er­ences and the like for a num­ber of inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions.

I think it is hard to fore­cast where you will get into and for what.

With the Belaru­sian spe­cial ser­vices being so tight-lipped, it is hard to tell about effec­tive­ness of cer­tain actions. What would be more cor­rect in such sit­u­a­tion – to keep silent, so as not to do harm, or to turn on the alarm?

I con­sid­er actions of my col­leagues, espe­cial­ly of the chief edi­tor (Viachal­sau Khada­sous­ki, Belorusy I Rynok news­pa­per) very cor­rect and delib­er­at­ed. He in fact made a lot for my defense and held a weighed strat­e­gy thanks to which my sit­u­a­tion has become mit­i­gat­ed. My rel­a­tives were in a hard con­di­tion because after my deten­tion they were rec­om­mend­ed not to spread infor­ma­tion…

I am thank­ful to col­leagues who pub­lished it in due time because it was absolute­ly rel­e­vant. In all, I think every­one did their best and nobody did any harm. I say thanks to all jour­nal­ists in Belarus and abroad who sup­port­ed me. I am sure it wall had its con­se­quences.

We remind that Ali­ak­san­dr Alesin, jour­nal­ist of Belorusy I Rynok, mil­i­tary affairs ana­lyst, was detained on Novem­ber 25. Infor­ma­tion about the deten­tion and the place of deten­tion became known to the pub­lic only at the begin­ning of Decem­ber.

On Decem­ber 8, his rel­a­tives announced that he had been accused of trea­son (arti­cle 356 of the Crim­i­nal Code) and coop­er­a­tion with spe­cial ser­vices or inves­tiga­tive bod­ies of anoth­er state (arti­cle 356.1). It was also report­ed that he was not the main sus­pect, the main per­son under con­sid­er­a­tion was a for­eign diplo­mat. On Decem­ber 10 the jour­nal­ist was released under recog­ni­zance not to leave the coun­try. He said that the charges of trea­son had been dropped; cur­rent­ly he is accused of coop­er­a­tion with for­eign spe­cial ser­vices. He keeps writ­ing in the same out­lets as usu­al.