Journalist Katsiaryna Barysevich and doctor Artsiom Sarokin to be tried today. They were greeted with applause

8 am in Min­sk — ‑22 degrees Cel­sius. The sun is ris­ing above the hori­zon as a large fire­ball — Kat­siary­na loved to pho­to­graph such sun­ris­es from her win­dow before her deten­tion.

Just after 8.30  the pub­lic begins to gath­er at the House of Jus­tice. «To attend the tri­al of Art­siom Sarokin and Kat­siary­na Bary­se­vich,» they say at the entrance, but the police begins to let them in clos­er to 9 o’clock. Only four uni­formed police­men with met­al detec­tors and three men in civil­ian clothes with walkie-talkies enter the build­ing after show­ing their IDs.

After 9.00 the fam­i­lies of the defen­dants arrive — Kat­siary­na’s daugh­ter Daria, Art­siom’s wife Natalia and moth­er Hali­na.

Col­leagues and fam­i­lies of the defen­dants are the first to come to the doors of the court­room. They are fol­lowed by two police­men in plain clothes. One wears a black mask, the oth­er — a bal­a­cla­va.

9.22. About 40 peo­ple have already gath­ered near the doors of the court­room. Those say­ing at the entrance that they are going to the tri­al of Bary­se­vich and Sarokin are tak­en aside — and only after a while are allowed inside.

9.38. Euro­ra­dio reports that at the entrance to the House of Jus­tice, unknown peo­ple in plain clothes say that no one will be allowed in, alleged­ly a lot of peo­ple have already crowd­ed the court­room.

9.40. Ale­na Ban­daren­ka, the moth­er of the deceased Raman Ban­daren­ka arrives. «Of course, I expect to get in the court room, that’s why I’m here. I believe that Kat­siary­na and Dr. Sarokin did not vio­late any­thing, I gave them per­mis­sion. As an opti­mistic per­son, I hope that jus­tice will pre­vail. Although, as the judi­cial prac­tice shows, and even in recent days, there is no jus­tice, » she said.

About 9.45. Kat­siary­na and Art­siom are brought into the room. The audi­ence greets them with applause.

9.50. Lawyers and rel­a­tives are allowed into  the court­room. Then comes the turn of the media which were accred­it­ed for the tri­al. Jour­nal­ists of inde­pen­dent media were not accred­it­ed to the hear­ing. They don’t call out the names of the media that are allowed into the court­room, — only the names of jour­nal­ists.

9.55.Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Embassies of the Unit­ed States, Ger­many, France, as well as the EU Del­e­ga­tion also came to the hear­ing.

«Since the defen­dants are in cus­tody, com­mu­ni­ca­tion with them is pro­hib­it­ed,» we hear from the court­room.

About 100 peo­ple remain at the doors to the court­room.

The judge is Svi­at­lana Ban­daren­ka, deputy chair for crim­i­nal cas­es of Mask­ous­ki dis­trict court. Kat­siary­na Bary­se­vich is defend­ed by lawyers Andrei Macha­lau and Mikhail Ban­darchuk, Art­siom Sarokin — by lawyer Vol­ha Bat­siuk. The Pros­e­cu­tor is Lud­mi­la Iva­nen­ka.

10.20. The pros­e­cu­tor requests to close the hear­ing for pub­lic, the defense strong­ly objects: there is a state­ment by Raman’s moth­er, who insists on the pub­lic hear­ing. Katsiaryna’s lawyer says: «Ban­darenka’s moth­er is the only per­son who may or may not con­sent to the tri­al being open for pub­lic.»

“I want the soci­ety to know why a jour­nal­ist and a doc­tor are stand­ing tri­al, so I sup­port my lawyer’s peti­tion,” says Bary­se­vich.

Doc­tor Art­siom Sarokin also asks for a pub­lic tri­al.

10.40 The deci­sion on whether to close the hear­ing for pub­lic is announced. The tri­al will be held behind closed doors: «in order to avoid dis­clo­sure of med­ical secrets pro­tect­ed by law and data from the pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion», and also because «the case mate­ri­als con­tain med­ical doc­u­ments, includ­ing those that have not been pub­lished before.»

This means that we will not find out what exact­ly they are accused of and what are spe­cif­ic charges against the doc­tor and the jour­nal­ist who told the truth about the state of the deceased pro­test­er. Even their fam­i­lies will not be able to attend the ses­sion.

What happened

On Novem­ber 12, Raman Bon­daren­ka died with­out regain­ing con­scious­ness. The night before, he was beat­en by unknown per­sons in the court­yard of the build­ing on the «Square of Changes», where he lived. On Novem­ber 13, the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee report­ed: «dur­ing the ini­tial exam­i­na­tion, along with the injuries, he [Raman Ban­daren­ka] was diag­nosed with alco­hol intox­i­ca­tion.» Almost simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with this state­ment in a copy of a med­ical doc­u­ment appeared on the Inter­net, from which it fol­lowed that Raman Ban­daren­ka had had zero lev­el of alco­hol in his blood.

TUT.BY jour­nal­ist Kat­siary­na Bary­se­vich checked this infor­ma­tion and, with ref­er­ence to med­ical doc­u­ments and the doc­tor’s com­ment, pub­lished an arti­cle enti­tled «Emer­gency hos­pi­tal doc­tor: «Raman Ban­daren­ka had zero per mill of alco­hol, noth­ing has been found.»

The Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office announced the ini­ti­a­tion of a crim­i­nal case on the death of Raman Ban­daren­ka only on Feb­ru­ary 18, 2021. The case against Art­siom Sarokin and Kat­siary­na Bary­se­vich was opened almost imme­di­ate­ly — on Novem­ber 19, 2020.

They were charged with dis­clos­ing a med­ical secret, entail­ing seri­ous con­se­quences (Arti­cle 178 part 3 of the Crim­i­nal Code). Accord­ing to the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office, pub­li­ca­tion of infor­ma­tion that on the evening of Novem­ber 11, Raman Ban­daren­ka was sober, «led to increased ten­sion in soci­ety, cre­at­ed an atmos­phere of dis­trust of the com­pe­tent state bod­ies, and encour­aged cit­i­zens’ aggres­sion and ille­gal actions.» At the same time, Ale­na Ban­daren­ka, the moth­er of the deceased Raman, gave her con­sent to dis­sem­i­na­tion of her son’s med­ical infor­ma­tion.