Charkasava’s Case: Outrageous Actions of Investigation Are Going on
Minsk Prosecutor’s Office is still going to put Anton Filimonaw, son of the murdered journalist, to soul asylum for stationary psychological and psychiatric expertise. On 2 February Anton’s grandmother Dyiana Charkasava managed to get the audience with the vice-prosecutor Mikalay Staravoytaw. She wanted to convince them not to do it. The prosecutors promised her only to “think it over” and also proposed her to “calm down journalists” and “not to create any obstacles for the expertise”.
According to Dyiana Charkasava, the main pretension of the prosecutors is that Anton wasn’t sincere with them. They don’t call him a murderer. The ruling to direct him for stationary expertise was signed by the major investigator of Minsk City Prosecutor’s Office Uladzimir Chumachenka and sanctioned by the first vice-prosecutor Mikalay Staravoytaw. The necessity of the expertise is explained with the fact that after the murder of his murder A. Fimimonaw was registered at Minsk child and teenager psycho-neurological clinic and in the end of November was taken to Minsk National Psychiatric Clinic for stationary treatment. The State service of medical court expertise which is subordinated to prosecutor’s office was empowered to conduct the expertise and find out whether A. Filimonaw was psychically ill “when he committed the crime”.
The vice-head of Belarusian Association of Journalists, lawyer Andrey Bastunets commented:
-- The formulation of the questions which experts are to find answers to is standard. However, it is quite strange why the prosecutor’s office tries to find about the psychic state of a person before proving relation to the crime.
When Anton’s father, (who divorced his mother long ago, has married again and lives in Moscow) found about this situation, he took his son to Moscow.
According to RFE/RL, Belarusian Prosecutor’s Office can apply to the Russian side with the demand to extradite A. Filimonaw. However, according to the convention about legal support that was signed by Russia and Belarus, the expertise can be held in Moscow.
