Alesin’s Case Suspended through Elimination of a Criminal Article

The case was sus­pend­ed, as “it was impos­si­ble to car­ry out inves­ti­gat­ing actions need­ed for mak­ing a deci­sion of com­ple­tion of pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion” (Arti­cle 246 part 1 item 5 of the Code of Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure).

Ali­ak­san­dr Alesin, jour­nal­ist of Belorusy I Rynok, mil­i­tary affairs ana­lyst, was detained on Novem­ber 25, 2014. Infor­ma­tion about the deten­tion and the place of deten­tion became known to the pub­lic only at the begin­ning of Decem­ber.

Ini­tial­ly, Alesin had been accused of trea­son (Arti­cle 356 of the Crim­i­nal Code) and coop­er­a­tion with spe­cial ser­vices or intel­li­gence bod­ies of anoth­er state (Arti­cle 356.1).

On Decem­ber 10, 2014, the jour­nal­ist was released under recog­ni­zance not to leave the coun­try. He said that the charges of trea­son had been dropped; he has been charged only with coop­er­a­tion with for­eign spe­cial ser­vices.

There had been no inves­ti­gat­ing actions on the case for a long time.

On Decem­ber 9^th, 2015 rep­re­sen­ta­tives of human rights orga­ni­za­tions of Belarus urged the Belaru­sian author­i­ties to stop polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed crim­i­nal cas­es, and the case against Ali­ak­san­dr Alesin, among them.