Police confiscates equipment from Babrujsk blogger

The result of the raid of the apartment of a Babrusjk resident Aleh Zhaunou was the confiscation of equipment, second in the recent seven months.

This time, the blogger claims, policemen took a hard drive, USB memory sticks, a laptop, recently purchased video monitoring device, disks, the web-site of the Viasna human rights center reports.

The reason for the police raid were the criminal charges brought against Aleh Zhaunou in early May. The charges have been brought under the article 340 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus “Knowingly false danger alert message” and relates to the case that took place in February at the police department building. Then, answering to the on-duty officer’s question of whether he had weapons on him, the blogger joked that any object could be used for these purposes, even an alarm keychain may explode at a certain temperature. Policemen took these words of Aleh Zhaunou as a danger alert message.

In the apartment the inspector were looking for a videotape that the blogger made during this conversation with the police department on-duty officer.

The blogger was subpoenaed to the investigation officer on 26 May.