On 14 May, a Minsk Judge passed sentence in the criminal case against 37-year-old Zmitser Taratun and his 23-year-old acquaintance Dziyana Kazak.
Judge Natallia Dzyadkova found them guilty of “malicious hooliganism” (Part 2 Article 339 of the Criminal Code) and sentenced Dzmitry to 3 years of freedom restriction and Dziyana to 1.5 years freedom restriction at home.
On the night of February 6th, Dziyana Kazak and Zmitser Taratun painted a heart, a fist, and a sign of victory on the wall of a transformer booth in one of the yards in Stakhanouskaya Street. The young men were spotted by the police from the patrol car and taken to the department of internal affairs of Partyzanski district. The police filed a report on both of them and took them to the detention center. Dziyana was sentenced to 15 days of administrative arrest, while Dzmitry served 25 days.
Even though both Kazak and Taratun were serving administrative arrest, a criminal case was brought against them. At first, the police tried to accuse the graffiti artists of extremism, but then they decided on “malicious hooliganism.”
The city authorities estimated the damage at 32 rubles 90 kopecks. Dziyana, as soon as she was released, immediately reimbursed the damage. She came to the court independently while Dzmitry was brought to the meeting by a convoy from the detention center. He was kept in custody after trying to flee abroad, thus violating his written undertaking not to leave the country. Taratun explained in court that when he learned about the harsh article, he was terrified. His unsuccessful attempt to get to Ukraine worsened his position in the case, as he was given another charge.
Dziyana Kazak’s lawyer, both during the investigation and in court, asked to terminate the case due to the lack of corpus delicti. In addition, he drew attention to the fact that the damage was insignificant, especially considering that there were other inscriptions on the transformer booth (though not of political content). And the defendants compensated for the damage right away. But all the arguments of the defense counsel were ignored. Instead, a heart, a fist, and a victoria on a dirty wall became a pretext to charge them with a serious criminal offense.
