Attorneys of Mikhail Marynich have prepared the cassation appeal to Minsk regional court to review the verdict to their client. On December 30 Minsk regional court found Mikhail Marynich guilty of misappropriation of office equipment, which had been given free of charge by the American Embassy to the public organization “Business Initiative” headed by him, for temporary use. The politician has been sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment in the medium-security colony and to confiscation of property. In the appeal the defense asks the judgeship of the Minsk regional court to reverse the sentence in the part where Marynich is found guilty of misappropriation of equipment belonging to the US Embassy. The attorneys ask to stop prosecution of Mikhail Marynich in the court of cassation without reconsideration. The full text of the Cassation Appeal follows.

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A district prosecutor’s office in Grodno has issued an official warning to Marina Bogdanovich, leader of the United Civic Party (UCP) in the Minsk region, ending a three-month investigation into her message aired on radio during October’s parliamentary campaign.

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Activist of Mahiliou “Zubr” department Maksim Dvaretsky sentenced to three days of arrest for graffiti “Freedom to Marinich!”. Dvaretsky was arrested in the night and accused of violating article 156 of Administrative code (Petty hooliganism).

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On January 11 in Minsk the joint Belarusian-Sudanese commission on cooperation of these countries. The first session of the commission took place on Monday, and the work is to continue for two more days. It is well-known that Sudan is one of the most unquiet countries in the world. Only last Saturday North and South parts of Sudan finally signed a peace agreement. But it does not concerns province Darfur, where millions of people are still dying. What Belarus could have in common with such a problem country?

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The leaders of all regional chapters of the Belarusian Social Democratic Party “Narodnaya Hramada” (BSDP) have thrown their support behind Nikolai Statkevich in a bitter conflict that threatens to split the major opposition party apart.

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The head of the OSCE Office in Minsk, Ambassador Eberhard Heyken, plans to discuss a number of issues concerning Belarus with the OSCE`s new chairman-in-office Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel, on January 13. The discussion will take place within the framework of the OSCE Permanent Council’s meeting, Dr. Heyken said at a news conference in Minsk on Tuesday.

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Eberhard Heyken, head of the OSCE Office in Minsk, expressed hope that cooperation between Belarus and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe would be expanded. “Let us hope that relations between Belarus and the OSCE in the year 2005 will develop and become broader for the sake of the people in this country,” he told reporters on Tuesday.

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A delegation of Norwegian PEN is expected to be on a visit to Belarus between February 15 and 20 to attend a workshop on human rights and freedoms, the organization`s secretary general, Carl Morten Iversen, told BelaPAN. The workshop is scheduled for February 18 and 19. It is being organized by the Norwegian-based Human Rights House Foundation.

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The Prosecutor’s Office of the Lenin district of Hrodna officially warned the chairwoman of Minsk regional organization of the United Civil Party Maryna Bagdanovich. The reason for that was an address of Mrs. Bahdanovich as a candidate in the parliamentary elections at Hrodna regional radio.

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A Belarusian delegation is absent in the list of official delegations that would take part in celebrations of the 60th anniversary of Auschwitz concentration camp liberation. Meanwhile, one of the high-ranking Polish officials engaged in international contacts and who wished to stay anonymous, told to Radio Svaboda that “It would be strange for a person who has praised Hitler, to be present in Oswiecim”.

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The head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) office in Belarus on Tuesday condemned a court sentence on a former Belarussian minister and diplomat who had been convicted of embezzlement. Mikhail Marinich, a former foreign economic relations minister and an ex-ambassador to Latvia, was sentenced to five years` imprisonment in a high security jail and to property confiscation.

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Aleksandr Lukashenko questioned the expedience of obtaining a country credit rating, expressing misgivings that political reasons may prompt US-based agencies to underrate Belarus. While speaking at Wednesday’s government conference, the Belarusian leader said he has a “very cautious” attitude to having Belarus’ creditworthiness rated. “On the face of it, finances should be dependent on the true situation in a country and its government’s actual ability to repay debts. But money ‘smells’ of politics in the first place at present,” official information sources quoted him as saying.

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The gas and electricity prices for households should not increase by no more than two percent, or 600 Belarusian rubels, a month, Aleksandr Lukashenko said while speaking at Tuesday`s government conference, official information sources reported.

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The Belarusian government has set this year’s grain output at 6.7 million tons, according to a directive issued by the Belarusian Council of Ministers in late 2004.

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Two men from Belarus have been extradited to the United States to face charges in a child pornography case spanning the globe, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau said on Tuesday. Yahor Zalatarou, 26, and Alexei Buchnev, 27, both of Minsk, provided Internet billing services to 50 child pornography Web sites and ran similar Web sites on their own, Customs said.

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The president and the marketing director of a Belarus-based Internet billing company linked to more than 1,000 child-pornography arrests worldwide have been extradited from France to the United States to face conspiracy, money-laundering and child-pornography charges, federal authorities said yesterday.

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