Detained Nasha Niva staff stays in custody after initial 72 hours

With­in 10 days, they are to be charged, and a mea­sure of restraint is to be deter­mined. If no charges are pressed, they are to be released.

The police raid­ed their homes and the NN offices on July 8. The search­es and ques­tion­ing of NN employ­ees were done as part of the case under Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code (orga­ni­za­tion and prepa­ra­tion of activ­i­ties that breach pub­lic order or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them) and Arti­cle 293 (mass riots).

Yahor Martsi­novich was ini­tial­ly detained for 72 hours on sus­pi­cion of com­mit­ting a crime under Arti­cle 342. Dur­ing inter­ro­ga­tion in the office of the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee, they called an ambu­lance for him.  Nasha Niva team says Martsi­novich was beat­en dur­ing deten­tion. A short video appeared in social net­works show­ing the jour­nal­ist with his hands behind his back walk accom­pa­nied by unknown peo­ple.

Andrei Skurko has dia­betes, and was allowed to take med­i­cine for on three days to a tem­po­rary deten­tion cen­ter.

On the morn­ing of July 8, www.nn.by could not be accessed any­more.  The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion said they had ruled to block the web­site.

The search­es in the offices of inde­pen­dent media and jour­nal­ists’ homes con­tin­ued for two days, July 8 and 9, and stopped or halt­ed for the week­end. The police raid­ed not only Nasha Niva, but also jour­nal­ists of Intex-press (Baranavichy), Hantsav­it­s­ki Chas, 1reg.by (Hantsavichy), Inform-Progul­ka (Luninets), Media-Polesye (Pin­sk, Luninets), Orsha.eu (Orsha), Brest­skaya Gaze­ta, Vir­tu­al­ny Brest, Strong News (Homel), and Onliner.by.

Across the coun­try, at least 19 media rep­re­sen­ta­tives and activists were detained. In 72 hours, some of them were released, includ­ing the edi­tor of www.orsha.eu Ihar Kazmer­chak (sus­pect­ed under Arti­cle 218 of the Crim­i­nal Code — delib­er­ate destruc­tion or dam­age of prop­er­ty) and Bel­sat free­lancer Zmitser Lupach (Hly­bokaye, detained at a local resort where he was on vaca­tion).