Siarhei Niarouny’s trial over extremism postponed to Wednesday

The jour­nal­ist plead­ed not guilty in court and stat­ed that the devices seized dur­ing the search of his apart­ment had been accessed by secu­ri­ty offi­cers in vio­la­tion of the law.

The court decid­ed to post­pone the con­sid­er­a­tion of the admin­is­tra­tive case until Octo­ber 20 and to release Siarhei Niarouny.

Accord­ing to the Admin­is­tra­tive Code, Niarouny faces a fine or admin­is­tra­tive arrest. Siarhei Niarouny is a for­mer edi­tor-in-chief of the Krychau non-gov­ern­men­tal news­pa­per Vol­ny horad.

Siarhei Niarouny was detained on Sat­ur­day, Octo­ber 16.

The jour­nal­ist’s apart­ment was searched, com­put­er equip­ment was seized and an admin­is­tra­tive report was drawn up against him for “dis­tri­b­u­tion of extrem­ist mate­ri­als” under Arti­cle 19.11 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code.

The jour­nal­ist spent two days in tem­po­rary deten­tion before the tri­al.