Blogger Dmitry Kozlov charged under Art. 34 Criminal Code

The politi­cian Niko­lai Statke­vich was charged with the same charge. Both are charged under part 1 of art. 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code «Orga­ni­za­tion or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order.»

They face up to 3 years in prison.

The accu­sa­tion was trig­gered by an inci­dent at a pick­et to col­lect sig­na­tures for Svet­lana Tikhanovskaya in Grod­no on May 29, when Sergey Tikhanovsky and anoth­er 9 peo­ple were detained. Statke­vich had pre­vi­ous­ly told the lawyer that he was in Grod­no for the last time last fall.

Accord­ing to the lawyer, Niko­lai Statke­vich and Dmit­ry Kozlov did­n’t plead­ed guilty.

Dmit­ry Kozlov was detained on June 10 along with activists of “Euro­pean Belarus” for posters post­ed in front of the Per­vo­maisky dis­trict court. On June 12, he was sen­tenced to 20 days of admin­is­tra­tive arrest.

Belaru­sian human rights activists rec­og­nized Statke­vich and Kozlov as polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.