Interior Ministry: Official propagandists allowed to do everything

The Savetski district police department refused to open a criminal case over disclosing information about the closed-door trial against Haidukou.

The relative ruling was sent to the Legal Transformation Centre (Lawtrend). Charter97.org obtained the text of the ruling. The author of an article about Andrei Haidukou refused to reveal his source referring to journalism ethics and professional secrets.

The document says the inquiry figured out that the information published in Sovetskaya Belorussia newspaper was obtained by a source, which the author refuses to disclose referring to journalism ethics and professional secrets. Officers of the Savetski district police department failed to find the source of information.

“This case raises a lot of ethical questions both to journalists and lawyers,” human rights defenders say.

In spite of the refusal of the police to open a criminal case, it's too early to put a period.

The final paragraph of the ruling says to send the copy of the document to the KGB department of the Vitebsk region for carrying out an inquiry over obtaining information about Andrei Haidukou by a journalist of Sovetskaya Belorussia.

We remind that the official newspaper published a number of articles about the “espionage case” in late August. Human rights activists expressed their concern about spreading the information that was supposedly received from materials of the criminal case or during the closed-door trial before the court decision took legal force.