Committee to Protect Journalists: We call for an independent investigation of Aleh Byabenin’s case

The Committee to Protect Journalists has many questions to the Belarusian authorities.

As Radio Svaboda reports, the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based nonprofit organization, calls for an independent investigation of the death of journalist Aleh Byabenin, the founder of popular pro-opposition website charter97.org.

The organization issued a statement expressing its concern about closing of the case by the Belarusian authorities.

“There are too many unanswered questions and omissions of evidence in the official probe. The government must allow outside experts to conduct the inquiry,” CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said.

ALeh Byabenin was found hanged in a stairway of his summer house outside Minsk on September 3, 2010. His colleagues and friends say they don’t believe it was a suicide.

Many of Byabenin's colleagues published stories questioning the suicide finding, which prompted a series of anonymous death threats, which all remained uninvestigated.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) announced on November 23 that two unnamed experts had concluded that Aleh Byabenin's death was indeed a suicide. The OSCE emphasized that the experts had not been given a mandate to conduct their own investigation from scratch; they simply reviewed materials compiled during the official Belarusian probe. Byabenin's body was not exhumed.

The CPJ reminds that founded by Aleh Byabenin website charter97.org has had frequent brushes with authorities for reporting on government wrongdoing, including human rights abuses, corruption in the security services, and opposition activities.