Pavel Levinau Fined for 25 Basic Amounts

Pavel Lev­in­au motioned to adjourn the hear­ing because of his ill­ness; also, he had con­clud­ed a con­tract with a lawyer, but the lat­ter did not man­age to come in time. Judge Ale­na Tsy­hanko­va dis­missed all the motions filed by Lev­in­au. She made two rep­ri­mands that the defen­dant attempt­ed to take the time with his motions; the rep­ri­mands were reg­is­tered in court records. She allowed video record­ing, but only if Lev­in­au did it by him­self.

So he did.

The judge dis­missed the motion to con­sid­er pho­tos and online mate­ri­als con­firm­ing that police in Viteb­sk had a spe­cial inter­est to the pho­to ses­sion of the jour­nal­ists and activists.

“I offered a num­ber of pho­tos to be includ­ed into the case mate­ri­als, includ­ing a pho­to of the real pick­et which I held in Novem­ber 2013. Nobody held me liable for that. So, I asked Major Ali­ak­san­dr Rybak­ou, who had made the admin­is­tra­tive reports, what caused the extreme inter­est in our pho­to ses­sion? I heard no clear answer. The Major repeat­ed the same things as in all the pre­vi­ous tri­als: that we were express­ing our civ­il and polit­i­cal inter­ests in the pho­tos.”

Pavel Lev­in­au, like all the oth­ers, was found guilty of hold­ing an unsanc­tioned pick­et and fined 25 basic amounts.

We remind that before Novem­ber 5, the day of the inter­na­tion­al cam­paign Stand Up For Jour­nal­ism, a team of BAJ mem­bers from Viteb­sk took a pho­to at the back­ground of a famous graf­fi­ti in Viteb­sk – the image of paper-cut birds fly­ing out of cage. This was a sym­bol­ic action to join the inter­na­tion­al cam­paign of the EFJ and the cam­paign of BAJ in sup­port of jour­nal­ists pros­e­cut­ed for their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties.

Six peo­ple, includ­ing Lev­in­au, were fined and one per­son was arrest­ed for three days for vio­lat­ing arti­cle 23.34 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code.