A court in Minsk ruled to recover 575 thousand Belarusian rubles ($224.4 thousand) from blogger Eduard Palchis sentenced to 13 years in prison, informs prosecutor’s office.
Palchis allegedly caused such an amount of damage to the enterprises “Minskturist”, “Minsktrans”, “Gorremavtodor of the Minsk City Executive Committee”, “Spetskommunavtotrans” and “Minskzelenstroy”.
The prosecutor’s office believes that the “property damage” inflicted by the blogger was expressed in “damage to property; expenses for the implementation of work to eliminate the consequences of mass riots; infliction of losses in the form of lost income from stopping the movement of urban passenger transport.”
Eduard Palchis is a social activist from Lida (Grodno region), a political blogger, the author of the Palchys telegram channel, which the Belarusian authorities recognized as extremist.
In December 2021, the Minsk City Court sentenced Eduard Palchis to 13 years in a high security colony. The blogger was found guilty under four articles: Part 3 of Article 130 (“Incitement of social hatred and discord, entailing grave consequences”); Part 1 of Article 293 (“Organization of Mass Riots”); Part 1 of Article 342 (“Organization of actions grossly violating public order”); part 3 of article 361 (“Calls for actions aimed at damaging the national security of Belarus”).
His wife with a newborn child was forced to leave Belarus.
In 2015, Eduard Palchis was already involved in a criminal case. Under the pseudonym John Silver, he published materials on historical topics and articles criticizing the Belarusian and Russian authorities on his website “1863x”.
He was arrested in Russia and extradited to Belarus in May 2016, where he was presented with articles of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus on inciting racial, national or religious hatred, and was also accused of distributing pornographic materials. At the end of October 2016, the Minsk City Court gave the blogger 1 year and 9 months without being sent to an open institution. Taking into account the time in the pre-trial detention center, he had to spend a month under subscription.
At the end of September 2020, the blogger was again detained. He was sentenced to 30 days of arrest, but he was never released.
