Brest resident gets one year of restriction of liberty for comment regarding senior police officer
On May 6, Maskouski district court of Brest completed hearing the case of Syarhei Zubovich, human rights centre Viasna reports.
According to the prsecution, the defendant left on the web a ‘comment of insulting nature’ which contained a ‘negative assessment of Mikalai Mikalayevich Karpyankou’. At that moment, the latter was head of the Main Department for Combating Organised Crome and corruption (GUBAZiK/CUBOPiK; now Karpyankou holds the post of Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs.
Judge Vera Filonik found the man guilty of insulting an official and sentenced him to 1.5 years of restriction of liberty without being sent to a correction facility. The court also ruled to confiscate the mobile phone from which the comment had been written to the state revenue.
In turn, Mikalai Karpyankou also claimed for ‘emotional distress’ damages; Syarhei Zubovich paid him off 1,000 rubles during the trial.
On September 6, during the dispersal of Sunday’s protest march in Minsk, Mikalai Karpyankou was in charge of a group of masked persons hunting for some protesters who found shelter in one of the cafes in Victors’ Avenue. To take them out, he batoned its glass door and destroyed it.
On October 17, Karpyankou said that law enforcers could ‘humanely’ use weapons, including lethal firearms, against the protesters during unauthorised rallies.
In mid January, By_Pol, a campaign created by opposition-minded people who earlier belonged to Belarusian uniformed services, made public an audio recording in which a man whose voice bears a strong resemblance to the voice of Deputy Interior Minister Mikalai Karpyankou refers to the instructions allegedly given by Alyaksandr Lukashenka on how to treat protesters and opponents of the regime. Among other things, the man mentions would-be adding the dissidents’ data to a special database and setting up a camp where ‘the cockiest [protesters] are to be kept’.
In a recent interview with state propagandist Ryhor Azaronak, Karpyankou said that the opposition ‘crossed the red line’. He promised to fight them by the rules of ‘anti-terrorist operations’. He also threatened the families of the opposition activists.
belsat.eu
