Belarus journo suspected of smuggling weed claims planting

Now the jour­nal­ist is sus­pect­ed of attempt­ed smug­gling of nar­cot­ic sub­stances across the bor­der, his lawyer Alyak­san­dr Haliyeu told Belsat.eu.

“On Novem­ber 22, the author­i­ties remand­ed Uladz­imir in cus­tody, i.e. he was arrest­ed as a sus­pect for two months. If a charge is brought in the next ten days, his being under arrest will last two months. If there is no charge in the com­ing week, he will be released,” Haliyeu said.

The exam­i­na­tion showed no traces of pro­hib­it­ed sub­stances in Chudzyantsou’s body, the lawyer added.

The jour­nal­ist is being kept in a deten­tion facil­i­ty in Brest. He refus­es to admit his being guilty and claims the case has been fab­ri­cat­ed. Accord­ing to Chudzyantsou, it is the Belaru­sian law enforcers who plant­ed drugs on him.

Pop­u­lar blog­ger NEXTA (Stsya­pan Svy­at­lou) post­ed a video ded­i­cat­ed to the case; NEXTA claims that the pros­e­cu­tion is noth­ing but the Belaru­sian regime’s revenge for Chudzyantsou’s help­ing him in mak­ing the much-talked-about doc­u­men­tary Lukashen­ka. Crim­i­nal Records. The film fea­tures the his­to­ry of author­i­tar­i­an regime in our coun­try; it has more than 1.5 mln views on YouTube, 500,000 – on the Russ­ian plat­form Odnok­lass­ni­ki and tens of thou­sands on oth­er social media.

Over the recent years, Uladz­imir Chudzyantsou has worked as a free­lance jour­nal­ist and con­tr­buted to the news web­site by24.org. Pre­vi­ous­ly, he was a cor­re­spon­dent at TUT.by, but in 2012, the man was giv­en a sack. In April 2016, the police raid­ed Chudzyantsou’s place and seized com­put­er equip­ment. As he was forced to sign a gag order, it is still unclear what was the case.