General Prosecutor’s Office of Belarus made to the Supreme Court the criminal case of Xenia Lutskina, a former journalist of the Belteleradiocompany and a member of the Coordinating Council. She is accused of conspiracy to seize state power (Article 357 of the Criminal Code), under this article she faces up to 12 years.
According to the case file, Lutskina, no later than August 17, 2020, joined the Coordinating Council, in which she was engaged in information work. The prosecution insists that the journalist tried to create a public Belarusian interactive television to “conceal and distort real facts, escalate protest activity, stimulate a split in Belarusian society, and form people’s negative opinion about the activities of state bodies.”
The investigation also claims that the defendant prepared and edited the texts of statements, appeals, other public speeches and publications on behalf of the Coordinating Council.
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Xenia Lutskina detained December 22, 2020. Also on December 22, searches and inspections were carried out in the office of the “Press Club” and the homes of a number of its employees. After that, six people were detained: founder Yulia Slutskaya, program director Alla Sharko, financial director Sergey Olshevsky, program director of the Press Club Academy Sergey Yakupov, cameraman Petr Slutsky, son of Yulia Slutskaya.
On December 28, the criminal case against the Press Club employees was transferred to the Investigative Committee. Yulia Slutskaya was suspected of tax evasion on an especially large scale (Part 2 of Article 243 of the Criminal Code), Sharko, Olshevsky, Yakupov, Slutsky, Lutskina of complicity (Part 6 of Article 16 of the Criminal Code) in committing a crime under Part 2 of Article 243 of the Criminal Code.
August 19 Slutskaya and her son Peter, Alla Sharko and Sergey Olshevsky came out from the pre-trial detention center in connection with the termination of the criminal case. Ksenia Lutskina and Denis Sokolovsky remained in custody. Later, on August 23, Sokolovsky was also released.
In conclusion, Lutskina began to have serious health problems – she developed a brain tumor. It is known that she refused to write a petition for pardon in the name of Alexander Lukashenko.
