The Belarusian Prosecutor’s Office has opened a criminal case against special correspondent of Novaya Gazeta Europe Iryna Khalip. She wrote about this on Facebook.
“It has been a long time since my parents last had a search. I cannot say they missed it or spent their free time running to the post office to check for summonses — but today someone came. A search in connection with a criminal case against me. My mother was interrogated. She is 89. What is curious is that the criminal case under an extremist article (no details about which one exactly were given to my parents) was opened by the Navapolatsk Prosecutor’s Office. I have been to Navapolatsk twice in my life — visiting my husband in the colony. I have no other memories of Navapolatsk,” she said.
As Khalip told Novaya Gazeta Europe, on the morning of 27 November security officers came with a search warrant to her parents’ home in Minsk. They presented a document stating that the investigative actions were being carried out within a criminal case opened against Khalip. According to them, the case was initiated under an “extremist” article, but they allegedly did not know the details. The search was conducted by police, while the case, they said, had been opened by the prosecutor’s office.
During the questioning of the journalist’s mother, Lyutsyna Belzatskaya, the officers tried to find out Khalip’s whereabouts and asked for her phone number. No items related to the correspondent’s professional activity were found in the apartment.
In the spring of 2011, a Belarusian court sentenced Khalip to two years of imprisonment with a two-year suspension in the case of the “mass riots” in Minsk in December 2010. After the suspension period ended, the court released her from criminal punishment.