Kobryn Activist Ales Mekh Recovered Verdict

The activist is getting ready for a "rematch" against the "oprichniks" from the police.

Ales Mekh, a public activist from Kobryn, was tried for alleged "disobeying police officers," but his guilt was not proved at the trial and he was acquitted, svaboda.org reports.

Kobryn district court judge Alla Bohnat found the policeman's explanations insufficient.

During the trial Ales Mekh testified that he had not demonstrated any disobedience to the policemen, as he had not been able to do that physically: in the blink of an eye, he had been rounded up by "masked people", put face down and handcuffed behind his back.

A witness-policeman said that he introduced himself and showed Ales Mekh and his acquaintance Dzmitry Charnitski his identity card, when they were coming out of the house entrance, after which Mekh allegedly started to "resist".

Aliaksandr Mekh and Dzmitry Charnitski were detained in the morning of August 15, when they were leaving Dzmitry's house. The detainees were taken to the police department, protocols were drawn up against them for "disobeying the police", and also a protocol for "swearing" was drawn up against Charnitski.

Dzmitry Charnitski was immediately taken to the court, where he was fined with 22 base units (506 rubles). Aliaksandr Mekh demanded a lawyer in the court and the meeting was postponed until August 16.

Before the detention they found a wiretap in a socket.

During the meeting, Ales Mekh named the reason for this brutal detention - shortly before the arrest, the activists found deviceы in the Charnitski's apartment, similar to wiretaps, which were hidden in sockets.

They took photos of those devices and decided to leave the apartment, but the unknown attacked them on the way out.

As Ales Mekh said, when they got their phones back after the trial, the photos of the devices were gone.

Mismatch with the sanction of the prosecutor

The witness police officer said that "insubordination occurred", after 9 o'clock in the morning when he and two riot police officers came to Charnitski with a search under the sanction of the prosecutor. However, Dzmitry Charnitski's parents witnessed that they, together with the police officers, waited for the prosecutor's sanction for about four hours after the police had detained Mekh and Charnitski, and all that time parents were not allowed into the apartment.

Ales Mekh explained this by saying that "all that time the police officers were removing the wiretapping devices from the apartment and were hiding the holes in the wall, in which wires from the equipment ran":

"In the evening, when we got into the apartment, the hole in the wall, from where we dismantled the wires, was repaired and the wallpapers were neatly sealed," – Ales Mekh said.

Ales Mekh will sue the police officers who detained him

As Ales Mekh told in court, the detention was very cruel, he could not even say a word to resist, as the police officer squeezed his neck. Dzmitry hit his chin and knees at the floor during the detention, the traces were left on his body.

Ales Mekh went to the hospital and recorded the beatings – traces from handcuffs and eye damage:

"The eye turned red not because of beating, but because I was squeezed by my neck, I literally could not breathe," –Ales Mekh says.

Ales Mekh said that he would complain about the police officers who detained him:

"We will go to the forensic medical examination once again, and we will try to bring these people to justice. For the last ten years, the police has forgotten what the law is. It acts like some oprichniks. They think that they have every opportunity to act illegally and with impunity. And our society must resist this."