Shklou: court reluctant to make policeman compensate court expenditures

On 6 February the Mahiliou Region Court turned down the appeal of the Shklou citizens Ina Khanrytsialiova and Serafima Yakauleva who had won at the Shklou District Court in an argument with the police officer Tadarenka. The woman asked the regional court to exact from him the money they had spent on advocatory services.

However, the judge Maimusava upheld the verdict of the district court, according to which no expenditures were to be compensated. The judges refused to comment on their decision and hurried to get out of the court hall as soon as the announcement of the verdict was over.

According to the human rights defender Barys Bukhel, the judges consulted one another for quite a long time, about 40 minutes, before issuing the verdict.

"The women turned the attention of the Shklou District Court to the fact that the Shklou District Court had confessed the groundlessness of the administrative charges issued to them by the policeman. The women had to hire a counsel to get the due defense at court. They paid 900,000 rubles for his services. As far as the policeman brought a groundless administrative case against the women, he was to have compensated these expenditures as well as the state fee," says Mr. Bukhel.

The human rights defender says that now he is waiting to be presented with the court ruling in order to appeal it to the head of the Mahiliou Region Court.

Bear in mind that the judge of the Shklou District Court stated in his verdict that though the participation of counsels in administrative trials is regulated by part 1 of Article 2.8 and paragraph 5 of part 1 of Article 4.1 of the Process-Executive Code of the Republic of Belarus on Administrative Offenses (PECAO), the code does not provide for compensation of such expenditures.

Barys Bukhel blankly disagrees with such a position and considers it as a defect of the PECAO.

"If some legal norm is absent in the legislation, part 2 of Article 21 of the Civil Process Code obliges the court to take decisions on analogy with some other law which regulates such situations. What concerns the giving case, the Criminal-Process Code, part 5 of Article 163 "Exaction of process expenditures" provides that the process expenses are to be compensated by the state if the accused is justified or the criminal case is dropped. As far, all this is specified in the law and the judge of the Shklou District Court could have done it, as well as the judges of the Mahiliou Region Court," comments the human rights defender.

The unlawful administrative cases against the mother and her daughter had been brought back on 29 August 2012. They were a result of an argument between neighbors about the border between their plots of land. A policeman who was a good acquaintance of their neighbor, decided to help her in the struggle against Serafima Yakauleva and Ina Khamrytsialiova. He drove to them by a car, shouted on them and then tried to pack them in the car. He didn't manage to do it, but the women got some bruises as a result of his attempts. Later he charged them with the "insubordination of lawful demands of a police officer".