Procuracy Doesn’t Hold Shydlovsky for Amoral Person :: Charter'97 :: News

Soviet district procuracy of Minsk passed an appeal against the court’s decision on the lawsuit, filed by the ZUBR activist against the newspaper “Sovietskaya Belorussiya” and personally its editor-in-chief Pavel Yakubovich.

As you know, this summer Shydlovsky sued the newspaper and its editor for defaming him. In the editorial Yakubovich wrote that Aleksei Shydlovsky spent 1,5 years in jail for a failure to pay alimonies to his wife, rather than for the political graffiti. Shydlovsky demanded refutation of that lies and reimbursement of 6mln rubles from the newspaper and 6mln rubles from its editor.
Judge Fedorova, who was in charge of the case consideration, left the lawsuit unchanged. Not only did she not make the defendants compensate moral damages but even obliged them to publish refutation. Procuracy deems that by her decision the judge violated art.240 of the Code on civic processes of Belarus, which reads that on the basis of the judicial verdict one may only put evidences, exposed to an all-round and objective examination.
The protest appeal will be reconsidered soon in the Minsk city court.