Moscow says it expects Belarus to respect rights of detained Komsomolskaya Pravda journalist

Accord­ing to Ms. Zakharo­va, the Russ­ian embassy in Min­sk is in con­stant con­tact with the Belaru­sian author­i­ties to dis­cuss issues regard­ing the oper­a­tion of the Belarus ver­sion of the Russ­ian news­pa­per Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da.  

“In reply to numer­ous ques­tions about the arrest of an employ­ee of the Belarus ver­sion of Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da, I would like to say that we are talk­ing about the Belaru­sian media out­let and cit­i­zens of Belarus. At the same time, the news­pa­per oper­ates as a sub­sidiary of a Russ­ian pub­li­ca­tion. So we pro­ceed from the assump­tion that the rights of jour­nal­ists will be observed in accor­dance with gen­er­al­ly accept­ed inter­na­tion­al stan­dards,” Ms. Zakharo­va said.

On Octo­ber 2, Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da report­ed that its jour­nal­ist Hien­adź Maže­j­ka had been arrest­ed and placed in the deten­tion cen­ter on Akresci­na Street in Min­sk.

Mr. Maže­j­ka is the author of an inter­view with a for­mer class­mate of Andrej Zieĺcer, a Min­sk man who was killed by offi­cers of the Com­mit­tee for State Secu­ri­ty (KGB) dur­ing a raid on his apart­ment on Sep­tem­ber 28.

Mr. Zieĺcer, a 31-year-old IT work­er, is believed to have fatal­ly wound­ed a KGB offi­cer before being shot dead inside his apart­ment.

In the inter­view, which was post­ed on the night of Sep­tem­ber 28, a woman who went to school togeth­er with Mr. Zieĺcer described him as a good per­son who “always stood up for truth.”

On the morn­ing of Sep­tem­ber 29, the web­site of the Belarus ver­sion of Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da stopped being acces­si­ble to users by order of the Belaru­sian infor­ma­tion min­istry.

Com­ment­ing on the move, Dmit­ry Peskov, spokesper­son for Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, said that the Krem­lin dis­agreed with it and con­sid­ered it to be a vio­la­tion of the prin­ci­ple of media free­dom.

On Octo­ber 1, a search was con­duct­ed at Mr. Mažejka’s home.

Accord­ing to the journalist’s moth­er, it was con­duct­ed by KGB offi­cers and last­ed for about two and a half hours.

The search war­rant list­ed two Crim­i­nal Code arti­cles. In par­tic­u­lar, Arti­cle 130, which penal­izes incite­ment to racial, eth­nic, reli­gious or oth­er social hatred, and Arti­cle 369, which penal­izes insults direct­ed at an offi­cial. 

Mem­o­ry sticks, stick­ers and badges were seized as a result of the search. 

Mr. Maže­j­ka him­self was not at home dur­ing the search.

His moth­er said that he had last spo­ken to her from a hotel in Moscow on Sep­tem­ber 30.