Charges Brought Against Deutsche Welle Correspondent In Belarus

Pauliuk Bykouski signed a written undertaking not to leave and “behave properly.”

On Thursday, November 8, the Belarusian judicial authorities brought charges against Minsk correspondent of the Russian edition of Deutsche Welle, Pauliuk Bykouski. He was accused of “unauthorized access to computer information, committed out of mercenary or personal interest,” namely, illegal access to the paid subscription of the state agency BelTA.

The interrogation in the Investigation Committee lasted for an hour and a half. Bykouski signed a written undertaking not to leave and “behave properly.” A suit amounting to 4 thousand Belarusian rubles (more than 1.5 thousand euros) was filed against him, the DW journalist says.

The charge was brought against the BelaPAN editor-in-chief and the tut.by news editor.

On Thursday, the same charge under Part 2 of Article 349 of the Criminal Code of Belarus was also brought against the chief editor of the BelaPAN agency, Iryna Leushyna, and the news editor of the Tut.by portal, Halina Ulasik. According to Leushyna, they demanded from her to compensate more than 12 thousand rubles. Ulasik reports that the charge was brought under the same article, the damage was estimated at about 17 thousand rubles.

These cases are associated with the so-called “BelTA case.” In early August of this year, the offices of the largest Belarusian resource, tut.by, and the BelaPAN information resource, as well as a number of other media outlets, were searched. The IC of Belarus detained and interrogated about 20 people, including DW correspondent Pauliuk Bykouski. Journalists were suspected of illegally accessing the paid information of the state agency BelTA. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in 2017 and 2018, without the knowledge and consent of the state agency, more than 15,000 connections were made to the information stored in its computer system.