‘BelTA Case’ Defendants Summoned To Investigatory Committee

There they will undergo procedural actions.

All suspects in the case, with the exception of Aliaksei Zhukau, have been summoned to the Investigatory Committee on August 27.

There they will undergo procedural actions in the presence of lawyers. This was reported by the HR center "Viasna" with the reference to BelaPAN.

The "BelTA case" was initiated under part 2 of Art. 349 of the Criminal Code of Belarus - "unauthorized access to computer information" (maximum penalty - 2 years of imprisonment). According to the investigation, during 2017-2018 the suspects illegally used a paid subscription to the news feed of the state agency BelTA for more than 15 thousand times.

On August 7 and 8, the offices of tut.by, BelaPAN were searched. The Investigatory Committee is dealing with the criminal case (Article 349) on "illegal access" to the paid content of the state agency BelTA.

On August 7, 10 journalists and editors of tut.by and BelaPAN were detained. Half of them were released in the evening.

On August 8, the Investigatory Committee detained three journalists of the realt.by portal and the editor-in-chief of this nedia, as well as the editor of the site of the newspaper "Belarusians and the Market" Aliaksei Zhukau and the correspondent of Deutsche Welle Pauliuk Bykouski.

On August 9, the Investigatory Committee detained the editor-in-chief of BelaPAN.

Only after international pressure and solidarity of journalists the Belarusian authorities released the detainees.