Arrested blogger Eduard Palchys aka Jhon Silver declined the services of defense lawyer Hanna Bakhtsina, news agency BelaPAN reports.
26-year-old Palchys who is being kept in Zhodzina detention center asked for being defended by a public defender. “It is a bit strange, but I think he knows what he is doing,” the blogger’s friend said.
Hanna Bakhtsina refused to explain the situation saying that she did not want to harm anyone. She does not know who will be appointed a new lawyer of Palchys.
At the moment it is not known whether the blogger has been formally charged.
Jhon Silver created 1863x.com, a blog dedicated to the current political developments in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, as well as Belarusian history and culture. The unsigned materials sharply criticized the regimes of Alyaksandr Lukashenka and Vladimir Putin.
According to Silver, two criminal cases were brought against him in 2015 for his activities in the blog – for allegedly inciting ethnic strife (in particular, for the article ‘Kill the Russian World’) and spreading pornography.
The blogger decided to hide in Ukraine. All the while he lived in Kyiv, from where he continued to work on the blog. But when the blogger went to a meeting in Russia in January 2016, he was arrested and put in jail. At the beginning of 2016 Sputnik i Pogrom, an extreme right-wing Russian organization, reported that the real name of the ‘Russophobe from Belarus’ is Eduard Palchys.
Some weeks ago Palchys was transferred from Russia’s Bryansk jail to Belarus.
The blogger may face up to five years of imprisonment for ‘inciting hatred’ and up to two or for years in jail – for allegedly distributing pornography, the Belarusian Investigative Committee states.
“The defendant, who was a website manager at 1863x.com, posted information pieces which contained signs of inciting ethnic hatred, as well as images of pornographic content, which is confirmed by expert examinations,” the Committee said.
Belsat.eu, following naviny.by
