Lawyer banned to speak about criminal case of Mikalai Autukhovich
2- 3.08.2009, 16:22
All information is a secret of investigation, and the lawyer is forbidden to tell it under threat of criminal persecution.
Pavel Sapelka visited his client in pre-trial detention center #1 and says “condition of Mikalai Autukhovich is far better”. Transferring Autukhovich to a common cell is not discussed, Mikalai Autukhovich is still in the medical unit.
Neither the lawyer nor Mikalai Autukhovich is going to appeal against access of German professor Martin Finke to the materials of the case. “What is the sense? What is the sense of a complaint if investigatory bodies allow everyone, except for the lawyer and his client to thrust one’s nose into the materials of the criminal case? Unlike the German professor, the lawyer is banned to speak about general provisions of the criminal case – allegedly to exclude all rumours, contradictions in the procedural status of the defendant,” Sapelka told “Belorusski Partizan”.
We remind that Mikalai Autukhovich was on three-month hunger strike from April 16 to July 16. He lost more than 35 kilograms of weight during the strike.
Vaukavysk entrepreneurs Mikalai Autukhovich, Yury Lyavonau, and Uladzimir Asipenka were detained on February 8, 2009. On February 18, they were charged under article 218 of the Criminal Code (intentional destruction of or damage to property of citizens). The three entrepreneurs are now in pre-trial detention center #1 in Minsk.
On July 17, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus issued a statement saying “on June 23, 2009, the main preliminary investigation department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus instigated a criminal case under article 359 of the Criminal Code of Belarus (a terroristic act) as preparing (article 13 of the Criminal Code of Belarus) against Autukhovich M. and other persons.”
Professor Martin Finke, an expert in criminal and criminal procedure law in Eastern Europe visited Belarus in July. According to an official press release of the OSCE Office in Minsk of July 24, the OSCE Office received a request from the Belarusian MFA on rendering aid to the government in “searching an independent legal expert specializing in criminal and criminal procedure legislation of the Eastern European region to examine the case of entrepreneurs Autukhovich, Lyavonau, and Asipenka”.
The visit of the expert was kept in secret. Neither governmental bodies not the OSCE Office in Minsk found it necessary to inform the accused, his lawyer or attorney about the visit. The expert didn’t talk to the accused and the lawyer, he only spoke with representatives of the authorities. based on one-sided information, Martin Finke came to a conclusion that there are no violations of the law in the case of Vaukavysk entrepreneurs.
