The Minsk police detained Euroradio journalist Raman Pratasevich on Monday morning. According to them, the man was spotted disorderly conducting in a bus a month ago.
The policemen focused their attention on his phone looking for something and repeatedly photographing the screen, Raman Pratasevich said. No one asked him to show his passport or sign a protocol or any other document, the journalist added.
Having spent a few hours in a police station, the journalist was released. In his opinion, the situation was ‘strange’.
“The case was opened under Article 339-1 of the Criminal Code (hooliganism). They claim I hit a driver when was going by bus to my girlfriend’s place in Loshytsa in late September. The driver allegedly identified me in a photo,” he said.
It is not the first time that Raman Pratasevich has come to the attention of authorities. He spent 10 days in the detention centre for protesting the so-called parasite law in the spring of 2017. A year ago, he was fined for taking part in an unauthorized mass event –March of Outraged Belarusians 2.0 which was held in Minsk.
It should be recalled that an unprecedented wave of media workers’ arrests started in Belarus on August 7,.
After Iryna Akulovich, Director of the state-run news agency BelTA, had reported ‘illegal access to their premium content’, the Belarusian Investigative Committee initiated a criminal case under the article ‘unauthorized access to computer information, made out of personal interest, which caused significant harm’. According to the authorities’ version, some employees of the above-mentioned media outlets have used another person’s password and got information owned by the Lukashenka mouthpiece over the past two years.
Tut.by journalists Halina Ulasik, Maryna Zolatava, Hanna Kaltyhina, Ulyana Babayed, Dzmitry Bobryk, Hanna Yermachonak, BelaPAN editors Tatsyana Karavyankova, Iryna Leushyna and Andrey Serada, Deutsche Welle correspondent Paulyuk Bykouski and the Belarusians and Market journalist Alyaksei Zhukau were detained. As part of the case, four journalists of the property portal realt.by were interrogated. A few days later, all the journalists were released from custody, but they are still under gag order. All the suspects in the BelTA case are banned from leaving the country.
As reported earlier, Dzmitry Bobryk wrote that after a three-hour interrogation in the Investigative Committee on August 7, he signed a cooperation agreement. According to him, there were direct threats to him and his relatives. However, after law enforcers realized they would get no information. their pressure on him intensified, Bobryk claims.
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