84 days in jail: Married couple arrested for 6th time for exchanging ‘extremist’ news in private messages
On September 23, the cases of Anastasiya Krupenich-Kandratsiyeva and Syarhei Krupenich were considered in Leninski district court of Minsk, human rights defenders report.
Again, they were tried for swapping stories from Telegram channels in their personal correspondence online. According to the authorities’ version, some pieces of the content sent were copied from ‘extremist’ channels.
In the course of the trial, Anastasia said that she did not know that those channels were considered as ‘extremist’ and that one should not have sent the information provided by them even in private messages. Syarhei promised that he would never be reading Telegram channels again. However, judge Tatsyana Shotsik has sentenced them to 13 days in jail.
Since July, officers of Leninski district department of internal affairs have been drawn six protocols on them for ‘distribution of information products that contain calls to extremist activities or promote such activities (Art. 19.11 of the Code of Administrative Offences), which has led to the Krupenich family’s repeatedly being tried and jailed. In fact, the only fault of husband and wife was exchanging information from Telegram channels which the Belarusian authorities consider as ‘extremist’ in private (!) messages. On August 26, they were sentenced for 15 days each; but after serving their terms, Syarhei and Anastasiya failed to go at large – new protocols under the same Article 19.11 were made against them. On September 10, the situation repeated itself, and the defendants got another 15-day term each.
To date, Leninski district court judges have punished Syarhei Krupenich and Anastasiya Krupenich-Kandratsiyeva with the total of 84 days of arrest.
