Ivan Barbashynski Released In Court Hall

The Slutsk resident has been brought to the court on a chain, to hear his sentence pronounced.

The sentence to Ivan Barbashynski has been pronounced on November 22 in the Slutsk district court. The defendant has been led to the court hall on a chain, attached to the handcuffs, Radio Liberty reports.

It remains unknown why they used the chain. Human rights defender Valiantsin Stefanovich has told the journalists that he never came across cases like this, but it seems like the handcuffs model with a chain is allowed in Belarus, and the usage thereof is not banned. Human rights defenders, says he, stand against defendants being in an enclosure, let alone chains.

Ivan Barbashynski has been pronounced guilty of resistance to the police, combined with violence. The court has sentenced him to 2 years of liberty restriction without sending to a specialized facility. Barbashynski claims that he and his brother are innocent.

After Ivan Barbashynski was released from custody, he has thanked the journalists.

The criminal case against Ivan’s brother Ihar Barbashynski was terminated after he had died in the remand prison in Zhodzina. They found traces of at least 17 blows caused by a hard blunt object on Ihar’s body.

As reported before, Ihar Barbashynski and his brother Ivan were detained by police officers on their way home after visiting a night café in late March. The brothers were accused of being under the influence of alcohol in a public place, and delivered to the sobering-uр station.

The next day, they called an ambulance to the sobering-uр station. The ambulance took the detainees to the polyclinics, where doctors recorded ribs fractures and numerous bruises of the detainees. The brothers submitted a claim that they had been beaten by police officers to the Slutsk department of internal affairs.

It turned out later that a criminal case had been started against the Barbashynski brothers for taking violent actions against police officers. Two months after the incident they were repeatedly detained and placed to the remand prison in Zhodzina.