On Monday morning, the Brest police have forcibly taken video blogger Syarhei Pyatrukhin to the forensic psychiatric examination centre.
The law enforcers requested his mental health assessment as part of a criminal case opened against Pyatrukhin under part 2 of Article 189 of the Criminal Code of Belarus (‘Insult’). The sanction of the article provides for a fine, or correctional labor for up to two years, or arrest, or restriction of freedom for up to three years. The man does not know whom he insulted, but he does not doubt that this way the authorities want to take revenge for his anti-corruption investigations.
He intended to get a copy of the decision to send him to a a psychiatric examination so that he could appeal against it, but in vain.
“On September 2, a policemen phoned Pyatrukhin and promised to make him undergo the examination,” human rights defender Raman Kislyak said.
On August 30, the riot police broke into the flat of Brest-based blogger Syarhei Pyatrukhin.
The policemen broke the door down, seized his computer, laptop and mobile phone and took the blogger to Leninski district police department. He had to give them account of his refusal to open the door.
“The reason must be the case of the battery plant. We have been threatened many times. They said if we didn’t stop we might land up in prison,” activist Alyaksandr Kabanau told belsat.eu.
Syarhei Pyatruhin and Alyaksandr Kabanau have been speaking against the construction of iPower battery factory in their native Brest. The activists repeatedly covered the protests against the potentially harmful enterprise.
