Criminal Case against Hary Pahaniaila Is Stopped

Minsk City Procurator’s Office stopped the criminal case against Hary Pahaniaila, vice head of Belarusian Helsinki Committee, because of the absence of corpus delicti.

This case was brought on 23 November 2004 upon part 2 of Article 367 of the Criminal Case (libel of president of the Republic of Belarus). The reason for it was the interview of Hary Pahaniaila to Swedish TV4, devoted to the disappearance of oppositional politicians. Hary Pahaniaila called the surnames of the duty officials of Belarus who, according to Pahaniaila and Christos Pourgourides, special rapporteur of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Council of Europe, had relation to the disappearances. The video cassettes with the interview was confiscated from Swedish journalists at the customs and at first examined by KGB and then directed to the procurator’s office for bringing the criminal case.

Hary Pahaniaila is the juridical representative of Zinaida Hanchar, (whose husband Viktar Hanchar, vice-speaker of the Supreme Soviet of the 13th Convocation was kidnapped on 16 September 1999) and of Dzmitry Zavadski’s wife and mother (the PRT Russian TV company cameraman, disappeared on the way to Minsk-2 airport on 7 July 2000).

-- It is the result of my cooperative work with the investigator. I tried to fill the case with the information and the documents that would confirm my innocence. Having consulted the law and his own conscience, the investigator decided to stop the criminal prosecution, most probably because of the absence of the court perspective, -- said Hary Pahaniaila in his interview to Pahonia newspaper.