Expert Testifies the Radiation Tests Were Incorrect

The defen­dant is rep­re­sent­ed by lawyer Siarhei Zikrats­ki and BAJ lawyer and chair­per­son Andrei Bas­tunets. The pre­sid­ing judge is Tat­siana Sape­ha. Briefly, the court declines most motions of the defen­dant.

The court heard the tes­ti­monies of the correspondent’s col­leagues who con­firmed that the milk had been bought from the farmer Nikalay Chu­bianok and brought to the Cen­ter of Hygiene for test­ing.

The defen­dant argues that the infor­ma­tion of the jour­nal­is­tic inves­ti­ga­tion relat­ed to the farmer and not to the dairy com­pa­ny Milka­vi­ta, so in fact Milka­vi­ta was unre­lat­ed as a plain­tiff. Today, the defen­dant motioned to attach a lin­guis­tic exam­i­na­tion of the claims held by a lin­guist of the State Yakub Kolas Lin­guis­tic Insti­tute: the expert con­clu­sion says that all frag­ments of the text, quot­ed in Milka­vi­ta law­suit, refer to the farmer, and not to the dairy com­pa­ny. How­ev­er, the court dis­missed the argu­ment.

Also, the court dis­missed Yuras Karmanau’s motion to involve the Cen­ter of Hygiene and Epi­demi­ol­o­gy as co-defen­dant.

This Wednes­day, the chief engi­neer of the Cen­ter Aksana Drabysheuskaya told that the data on stron­tium could not be treat­ed as valid because estab­lish­ing con­t­a­m­i­na­tion by this ele­ment requires a com­pli­cat­ed and long-last­ing pro­ce­dure. The data indi­cat­ed in the print­out that was hand­ed in to the reporter were not pre­cise because it was impos­si­ble to hold cor­rect mea­sure­ments in liq­uid state.

The judge ordered the expert to present tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions of the equip­ment that was used in the tests.

The hear­ing con­tin­ues on Decem­ber 9, at 2 pm.

At the pre­vi­ous hear­ing, on Novem­ber 28, the court dis­missed the motion to allow Asso­ci­at­ed Press agency as co-defen­dant. Also, the plain­tiff changed the ear­li­er claim of refu­ta­tion: now the com­pa­ny does not want the refu­ta­tion to be pub­lished by the agency and some oth­er out­lets who repost­ed that inves­ti­ga­tion; now the plain­tiff wants the reporter to send an offi­cial refu­ta­tion to the agency say­ing that the infor­ma­tion sub­mit for the report was no true.

Back­ground of the sto­ry Dairy Com­pa­ny Sues AP Jour­nal­ist for Report about Radioac­tive Milk (Upd)