Supreme Court dismissed Siarhei Satsuk’s appeal

The court hear­ing on Siarhei Satsuk’s case took place on 10 Feb­ru­ary in cam­era. Due to such “con­fi­den­tial­i­ty”, the details of the ses­sion are unknown, but as a result, Supreme Court Judge Tat­siana Vasile­vich found no rea­son for resen­tenc­ing.

This is despite the fact that Siarhei Sat­suk, who had spe­cial­ized in legal issues for many years, first at Belorusskaya Delo­vaya Gaze­ta and then at the Ezhed­nevnik media out­let, took the com­plaint extreme­ly seri­ous­ly. His writ­ten protest count­ed 85 pages of evi­dence to prove his inno­cence. How­ev­er, the judge with 20 years of expe­ri­ence in the law field seemed to be unim­pressed by these argu­ments.

Siarhei Sat­suk is an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist and edi­tor of the Ezhed­nevnik news out­let (ej.by). He was detained on 8 Decem­ber 2021 and charged with bri­betak­ing, incit­ing social hatred, and abuse of pow­er or office.

On 26 Octo­ber 2022, Min­sk City Court Judge Svi­at­lana Ban­daren­ka sen­tenced the defen­dant to 8 years of impris­on­ment and a fine.

He is also banned from hold­ing admin­is­tra­tive posi­tions for five years. To ensure the exe­cu­tion of the sen­tence, the prop­er­ty of the jour­nal­ist was seized: a car, lap­tops, tablets, mobile phones, and oth­er elec­tron­ic devices.