Targets in BelTA Criminal Investigation Served Official Charges

In par­tic­u­lar, four TUT.BY jour­nal­ists were offi­cial­ly charged with «hav­ing per­formed delib­er­ate, for finan­cial or oth­er per­son­al gain, unau­tho­rized access­es to com­put­er infor­ma­tion stored in the com­put­er sys­tem and net­work of BelTA uni­tary enter­prise, accom­pa­nied by secu­ri­ty breach, entail­ing oth­er sig­nif­i­cant harm through neg­li­gence.»

In each case, the dam­ages amount from 3, 000 to 14, 230 BYN.

The jour­nal­ists are free under recog­ni­zance to behave and no to leave the city.

On August 7, the police searched the offices of TUT.BY and Bela­PAN and detained  Mary­na Zolata­va, chief edi­tor of TUT.BY, TUT.BY’s edi­tors Han­na Kalty­hi­na, Hali­na Ulasik, and Han­na Yarma­chonak, Bela­PAN’s chief edi­tor Iry­na Leushy­na and its com­men­ta­tor on inter­na­tion­al affairs Tat­siana Kar­avenko­va, Deutsche Welle’s cor­re­spon­dent Pauliuk Byk­ous­ki, and edi­tor of Belorusy i Rynok web­site Ali­ak­sei Zhukau. They all spent sev­er­al days in Akrestsi­na tem­po­rary deten­tion cen­ter. On August 27, most of the sus­pects were banned from leav­ing the coun­try.

The jour­nal­ists and edi­tors received sup­port from the Euro­pean Union, the Coun­cil of Europe, the Unit­ed States, as well as inter­na­tion­al human rights orga­ni­za­tions.

Four more TUT.BY employ­ees remain sus­pects in the case.

On Sep­tem­ber 25, TUT.BY edi­tor Dzmit­ry Bobryk made a state­ment on his Face­book page. The jour­nal­ist said, he had expe­ri­enced pres­sure from the state rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the very begin­ning of the inves­ti­ga­tion into the “BelTA case”, who made threats of dis­clos­ing details of his per­son­al life.