Matlokh against Sasim :: Charter'97 :: News

The trial of the public campaign activist Mikita Sasim was held in Minsk .The judge of the Central district court of Minsk Tatstsyana Pauliuchuk sentenced a guy to 10 nights of arrest in compliance with Article 17.1 of the Code of the Republic Belarus on administrative violations.

It is the craze of writers to give names to their heroes and antiheroes which speak for themselves. Surnames Matlokh and Sasim are not the reporter’s creation; they belong to real antihero and hero of one of the administrative court trials in Minsk, the Polish Radio reports.

Mikita Sasim, activist of the “Jeans for Freedom!” campaign, was arrested for 10 nights only for his supposed swearing in the center of Minsk and insulting the public. Staff members of the special militia regiment of the interior department of the Minsk regional executive committee Syargei Matlokh and Vadzim Kruchonak who had reportedly caught the guy on doing such disgraceful thing witnessed against him. It so happened that 16 August 2007 at around 8p.m. they committed their usual patrolling of the Pobediteley Avenue .The guys dressed in plain clothes took care of the public order and quietness lest somebody disturbed them. They heard Mikita Sasim’s swearing, by the way, one of them from the 2 meter distance and the other-from 7meters. That was the story they told at the court, though other witnesses who had been with Mikita Sasim at that time were witnessing differently.

Mikhail Pashkevich, young democratic activist, tried literally “to recapture” his friend.

“We were moving along the former Masherau Avenue passing by the Moskva cinema. Mikita Sasim was a couple of steps behind. Soon a patrol car stopped near him. The staff members in plain clothes seized him and forced into the car. On our trying to recapture him Tatstsyana Tishkevich was struck over her head and now is hospitalized. I was hurt and thrown onto the motorway with a heavy traffic but my friends managed to pull me out of the way. If it were not them I could be run over by the moving cars. Mikita as the leader was the first to be detained. But the activists are well-organized people and even when left without our leader we, nevertheless, managed to do what we had envisaged to. But when after the action the activist tried to find out Nikita’s location they were given no definite answer either at the Minsk Central district interior department or at the security department .Now it appears at the court that the people who yesterday forced Mikita into the patrol car are the militia staff-members who, according to them, detained Sasim for swearing. Before lunch time at the court we had a brief dialogue with the prosecution witnesses, those special militia regiment staff members who had been beating our friends up. Generally speaking, those people have no belief; they were even afraid to meet our glances. When we asked him whom he served he answered that he served the Republic. And the judge who presides today at the court, it is not her first political case. It is curious, she is fairly young and being a lawyer she could have found another job. But obviously this job is to her liking”, Mikhail Pashkevich says.

The talk was recorded by the Polish Radio near the court at the lunch break in the court. Around 20 activists, Mikita’s friends, came to support him .Everybody was in anxiety lest the judge Pauliuchuk conducted the trial without Mikita’s friend but only in the presence of a lawyer and witnesses.

“The court intended to continue working during the lunch time but we announced Mikita’s appeal for the trial to be held in the presence of his friends. Not to violate the openness requirement the judge had to announce the break”, Mikita’s lawyer Svetlana Garbatok reported.

If the judge hadn’t taken the decision we wouldn’t have heard the prosecution witnesses confusing their evidences. For example , they heard Mikita swearing at different distances .One of them stated that Mikita was arguing with a passer-by, the other that Mikita’s swearing was not addressed to anybody- simply in the center of the city the guy was talking to himself , swearing and making gestures .When the lawyer asked why the person whom Mikita had reportedly swearing at was not invited as a witness one of the witnesses answered that they had been busy forcing Mikita into the car though the other witnessed that Mikita Sasim had not offered any resistance. Why didn’t the militiamen show Mikita Sasim their I.D.s and didn’t announce him his rights? Why had the detainment report which was the main prosecution evidence not been signed by Mikita Sasim himself? There was a lot of confusion.

The talk was also heard by the second secretary of the US embassy Steven Guillen who watched the trial.

I am here to watch the process as our embassy’s representative. As you know, our embassy closely watches the human rights situation here in Belarus. And, certainly, if we see the case when it is obvious that the young human rights and democratic activist had only made an attempt of taking the action but was detained by the militia .That is a very typical situation of the human rights, speech and meetings liberty violation, Steven Guillen declared.