11 People Were Convicted On Political Charges At Once In Brest

• 13.09.2024, 11:15

The names and terms have been announced.

On September 12, the Brest District Court handed down a mass sentence under Part 1 of Article 342 of the Criminal Code (active participation in actions that grossly violate public order).

For participating in the protest on August 10, 2020, 11 local residents were convicted at once, writes the Viasna HRC.

They are Ilya Sabko, Aliaksandr Zaitsau, Mikalai Kapliuk, Kiryll Yeutsishyk, Mikalai Misiuk, Artur Zaremba, Dzmitry Lysiuk, Aleh Bandaruk, Mikhail Veramchuk, Dzmitry Salaveika, Dzianis Yakavenka. The judge sentenced them to terms ranging from two years of "house arrest" to one and a half years in prison.

According to Berasceiskaia Viasna, the sentence was:

Mikalai Misiuk — one year in a general regime prison;

Mikhail Veramchuk — two years of "house arrest" (restriction of freedom without being sent to an open-type correctional facility);

Dzmitry Salaveika — two years and six months of "house arrest" (restriction of freedom without being sent to an open-type correctional facility);

Ilya Sabko, Aliaksandr Zaitsau, Mikalai Kapliuk, Kiryll Yeutsishyk, Artur Zaremba, Dzmitry Lysiuk, Aleh Bandaruk, Dzianis Yakavenka — one year and six months in a general regime prison each.

The essence of the charge against everyone was that on August 10, 2020, people in Brest "shouted slogans, demonstrated White-Red-White banners, and went out onto the roadway." By doing so, they allegedly grossly violated public order.

Thus, as noted by Brest human rights activists, 70 people were previously sentenced to prison under Article 293 of the Criminal Code (participation in mass protests). After some calm, at the end of 2023, new arrests for those protests appeared – the authorities began to present Article 342 of the Criminal Code. It is already known about 48 people convicted under Article 342 of the Criminal Code for the protests in Brest, which took place on August 10, 2020.