A prosecutor demanded three years of jail for Belarusian-Ukrainian journalist Dzmitry Halko, also known as Zmitser or Dmitriy Halko, during a trial at Minsk’s Soviet Court on July 16.
The verdict on Halko’s case will be announced at 5 p.m. on July 17.
Halko, a former fixer for the Times of London, a freelancer for the Kyiv Post, and a journalist for Belarusian opposition publications, was arrested by Belarusian authorities in April after returning from Ukraine. He now faces up to six years in jail on charges that he used violence against police officers in November during his son Yan’s birthday party.
He denies the accusations and believes the case to be fabricated and political.
Belarus has had strict media censorship since dictator Alexander Lukashenko came to power in 1994. Independent news sites such as Belarusian Partisan, BelaPAN, naviny.by, onliner.by, and Khartia 97 have all been blocked by the Belarusian authorities in recent years. Meanwhile, many journalists have been arrested, jailed, or killed under Lukashenko’s rule.
Halko said during the trial that he was tortured by being repeatedly deprived of food and water, being constantly handcuffed and held in a very small concrete solitary cell for hours. Belarus’ Interior Ministry, which runs the prison system, did not respond to a request for comment.
Before the July 16 hearing, the original prosecutor in the case had been replaced by a different one.
On July 16, Halko delivered a final speech, saying that if he was convicted, it would result in the “collapse of the Belarusian justice system” due to glaring contradictions in the police officers’ testimony.
Yuriy Chirkov, one of the police officers questioned by the court, said during his first testimony last year that he had been hit by Halko as a result of which the officer had fallen to the ground. But in July his testimony was different: he claimed that Halko had hit his arm making the officer’s phone to fall to the ground denying that he himself had fallen on the ground. He also said he had forced Yan to lie on the ground.
Vadim Kazakovsky, the second police officer questioned by the court, did not confirm the first officer’s claim that he had been hit by Halko. He said he did not witness the incident.
The medical examination report on Chirkov’s alleged light injury was compiled many days after the incident, which could imply it was falsified, the defense argued.
On July 13, Halko said that the police officers had violated the law by illegally breaking into his apartment and demanded compensation from them. He said that the officers had lied, falsified their testimony and committed crimes.
He also said that the police officers did not present their documents and did not name themselves.
Halko’s lawyer argued that, under Belarusian law, the police did not have a right to enter his apartment because they had no warrant from a prosecutor and because they had no evidence that a severe crime could be taking place there.
The lawyer also said there were other procedural violations during the police raid: no administrative infraction report was compiled, and those present were not notified of their rights and obligations.
Halko said that he had agreed to turn down the music after the police complained about the noise, but Chirkov had pushed him aside and stormed into the apartment. Chirkov claimed that he entered it because he suspected there could be a drug dealership or porn studio at the apartment.
Halko said he had taken the police officer by his coat and led him out of the room but denied hitting the officer. Halko also said that the police officers then pushed him and his son to the floor.
The teenagers present at the party said they had not seen Halko beating any of the police officers.
One of the teenagers testified that she had been pushed by the police officers, and she had bumped into sports equipment. Several teenagers jumped out of the windows during the raid, causing one of them to break his leg and another one to break his spine.
Alexander Yakunchikhin, the judge in the case, has tried other opposition activists in the past and has been sanctioned by the European Union.
The judge also rejected several of the lawyer’s requests, including a request to question witnesses of an administrative case opened against Halko in November. Halko’s former wife Olga Kravchuk interpreted it as a sign of the judge’s bias.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said on July 7 that “Belarusian authorities should immediately release journalist Dzmitry Halko and drop all the charges against him.” On July 12, Reporters Without Borders also called for Halko’s immediate release.
“Detained since April and facing a possible six-year sentence on a charge of using force against a police officer, he is clearly the victim of persecution,” Reporters Without Borders said.
Halko has always been an active participant in protests against Lukashenko’s dictatorship. He was arrested on numerous occasions for his opposition activities, the most recent arrest being in 2017.
He became an editor and journalist at the Belarusian Partisan online newspaper in 2016 and transformed it into one of the most opposition-minded and critical media outlets in Belarus. The Belarusian Partisan was founded by Pavlo Sheremet, a Belarusian-Ukrainian journalist who was killed by a car bomb in Kyiv in 2016.
Halko’s former wife Olga Kravchuk still worked as the webmaster of the Belarusian Partisan, an opposition publication, at the time of the raid. The police were most likely hoping to gain access to the publication’s site from his apartment as part of a crackdown on the news site before it was shut down by Belarusian authorities in December, according to Halko.
Halko, known for his pro-Ukrainian and liberal views, also covered Ukraine’s EuroMaidan Revolution and Russia’s war against Ukraine for the Novy Chas online newspaper from 2013 to 2015.
He has lived alternately in Minsk and the Ukrainian city of Mariupol since 2014. Previously, he also lived in Russia.
