Ashmiany: hearing on the confiscation of personal belongings from Mikalai Ulasevich postponed to 25 July

On 16 July the Ashmiany District Court was to have considered the lawsuit of Mikalai Ulasevich, a civic activist from the Astravets district, concerning the personal belongings which had been confiscated from him at the border crossing "Katlouka" back on 10 April 2011.

Some of them were destroyed after an examination held by the Hrodna Regional KGB Department and the ideological department of the Hrodna Regional Executive Committee, including two sents of educational posters "Chernobyl lessons", published in Moscow, almost twenty stickers "Fukushima" and "Born to NOT crawl" and a brochure with an alternative report of the Belarusian NGOs on the situation of human rights in 2010.

It should be noted that this is the third round of litigation between Mikalai Ulasevich and the Ashmiany customs office. The first one took place back in 2011, when Judge Davydava of the Ashmiany District Court hastily reviewed the case and made the decision to reject Ulasevich's claim because he had allegedly missed the one-month term for passing the appeal without a good excuse. The court ignored the fact that Mr. Ulasevich made several attempts to solve the dispute with the customs office without going to the court.

The second round of the litigation ended in favor of Mikalai Ulasevich: the court rejected the lawsuit of the customs office, which solicited for finding the confiscated items as no one's property, as far as there was a dispute at the court about the ownership of the seized items, some of which the customs office refused to return.

The upcoming hearing will be held to consider Ulasevich's claim to return to him his property, a part of which was destroyed at the Astravets District KGB Department. A peculiar moment is that the court has to summon to the trial the defendants – representatives of the Hrodna Regional KGB Department and the ideological department of the Hrodna Regional Executive Committee, who held the examination and ruled that the items were to be destroyed.

As it became known on 15 July, the hearing was postponed to 25 July due to the general assembly of the judges of the Hrodna region on 16 July.