Journalist Iryna Slaunikava arrested for “distribution of extremist materials” for 15 days

The jour­nal­ist was detained at night at Min­sk air­port. She arrived from Egypt, but the rel­a­tives who were meet­ing her, nev­er saw her com­ing out of the gate.

The jour­nal­ist was detained togeth­er with her hus­band Ali­ak­san­dr Loi­ka. At the same time, bor­der guards and cus­toms offi­cers told Iry­na’s father that they had­n’t detained any­one. Lat­er Iry­na’s father was told in the police depart­ment that they were detained alleged­ly for com­mit­ting an admin­is­tra­tive offense.

How­ev­er, in court Ali­ak­san­dr Loi­ka said that he and Iry­na Slau­nika­va were detained at the pass­port con­trol on the night of 30 Octo­ber, hand­cuffed, and not even allowed to take their lug­gage. Before the tri­al, Alexan­der was kept in a dou­ble cell with 10 peo­ple. Loi­ka also said that he was offered to record a “con­fes­sion video”.

Lat­er it became known that Slau­nika­va and Loi­ka were charged with an admin­is­tra­tive offense under Arti­cle 19.11 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code (“Dis­tri­b­u­tion, pro­duc­tion, stor­age, and trans­porta­tion of infor­ma­tion prod­ucts con­tain­ing calls to extrem­ist activ­i­ty or pro­pa­gan­da of such activ­i­ty”).

Iri­na Slau­nika­va and her hus­band Ali­ak­san­dr Loi­ka were kept in the tem­po­rary deten­tion cen­ter in Akrestin Street until the tri­al.