Trial Over Kanstantsin Lukashou Started :: Charter'97 :: News

A trial over Kanstantsin Lukashou has started in the court of Lenin district of Minsk. He is charged with resistance to policemen, Radio Svaboda informs. On March 29 last year Kanstantsin Lukashou was taking V Siuchyk from the surgery of the third Minsk city hospital. On that day unknown persons with IDs of Interior Ministry workers were trying to detain Siuchyk after he was discharged from the hospital. However the brother helped the activist to escape. Since December 19 Kanstantsin Lukashou is kept in custody. He faces up to 6 years of imprisonment.

Several dozens of people gathered in the court of Leninski district of Minsk. Among them were representatives of the OSCE, the US Embassy in Minsk, a leader of the united civil forces Alyaksandr Milinkevich, his wife Ina Kulej, a filmmaker Yury Khaschavatski, a human rights activist Ludmila Hraznova and others.

Yesterday the court heard evidence for the prosecution of the prosecutor’s office and of four witnesses on the incident in the year of the 3rd clinical hospital on March 29. Kanstantsin Lukashou was driving in a car with his brother Vyachaslau Siuchyk. Plainclothes policemen were making signs to Kanstantsin to stop the car, but he refused.

Later one of the policemen complained to the prosecutor’s office that he had been supposedly run down by the Lukashou’s car. The policemen submitted a statement of a medical examination that he had a brain injury.

“I personally saw a man in gym suit, which appears to be a new police uniform, was running out of the hospital yard to Lenin street, and then from Lenin street to Ulyanauskaya Street. I saw him alive and kicking, when our car was living the crossroads. He was talking over a mobile phone. I find forging documents about his brain injury a travesty of the truth. When a person has such a trauma, he cannot behave this way,” Kanstantsin’s brother Vyachaslau Siuchyk said.

A lawyer of Kanstantsin Lukashou thinks the verdict is to be delivered in the end of the week.