Leanid Svetsik: “The want to turn me to homeless”
- 17.07.2009, 12:26
Vitsebsk human rights activist Leanid Svetsik got the biggest fine ever given by courts of the region.
The Vitsebsk region court decided Leanid Svetsik must pay 31.5 million rubles to the state. Besides, Svetsik must pay for court and other costs, Radio Svaboda reports.
It took more than a month for the judge of the region court Halina Urbanovich to consider the case of the human rights activists, accused by the KGB of stirring up national hatred. The human rights defender got a huge fine.
Leanid Svetsik finds this accusation groundless, as the authenticating check showed he has no relation to RNU letters Vitsebsk oppositionists, intellectuals, officials and representatives of Jewish communities were receiving in 2006–2008. He states there are no proofs of his guilt on the case: the commission of experts checked the office equipment confiscated from him didn’t give an exact answer to the question whether it was used to print the letters, the answers were “maybe” and “possible”. Taking into account the fact the confiscated computers and printers were kept in the KGB for more than a year, Leanid Svetsik can’t say what has been done to this equipment. Moreover, it wasn’t checked when exactly the letters were written.
Leanid Svetsik strongly objects the verdict of July 16 and doesn’t admit his guilt. He is going to appeal against the court decision as he finds it unfair and insulting. It is practically impossible for a common man owning only a three0room flat to pay 1 $10.5 million fine, court costs, costs for experts’ evaluations, and a million of material compensation to Tamara Krasnova-Husachenka, head of the Vitsebsk branch of the pro-governmental union of writers.
“If I sell this flat, my family will have to live in streets,” Leanid Svetsik says. “In fact, the state had turned me, two my minor children and my wife into a potential homeless”.
Leanid Svetsik’s wife is on maternity leave now. Svetsik has two children – nine-year-old daughter Viktoria and son Arseni under two years.
We remind that in 2006–2007, Leanid Svetsik was rendering legal aid to Vitsebsk activists, who received letters with threats on behalf of unregistered pro-Nazi organization Russian National Unity, was helping to prepare complaints to prosecutors. A criminal case over fact of threats from RNU was instigated by the Vitsebsk KGB only on May 20 last year. Leanid Svetsik was mentioned as a witness in the case, but later he was said he was the suspected under article 130.1.
Prosecutor Syarhei Selikhanau asked to sentence the human rights activist to 2 years of standard regime penal colony.
On July 16 the court found that Leanid Svetsik allegedly had been personally involved in writing and disseminating these letters. According to conclusions of judge Urbanovich, in this way Svetsik was settling personal scores.
Opposition activists, who appear as wronged persons in the case of “RNU letters”, have stated that they do not believe that Svetsik is guilty. They think that the human rights activist who demanded to find those responsible for sending letters with threats to them and other well-known people in 2006-2007, is intentionally charged with stirring up ethnic discord in order to discredit the human rights defense movement as a whole.