Consideration of the request for the transfer of Sofia Sapiega to Russia was postponed for the second time

2023-06-01 13:48:04

Initially, Sapegi’s lawyers asked to move the hearing of the case from the Moscow court to Vladivostok to July 1, so that the prosecutor’s office “could review the defense’s motions.” However, from the information of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it turned out that Sofya has been registered in Smolensk since October 2012, Mediazona writes. Therefore, they decided to transfer the consideration of the petition to the Industrial District Court of Smolensk.

The date of the hearing is unknown.

In the case file on the court’s website, it was initially shown that Sof’i was charged under part 1 of Article 203 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“exceeding the powers of an employee of a private security company”).

Supermarket guards who used violence against customers are usually tried for it, the publication notes. The press service of the court did not answer the calls of the “Mediazona” correspondent to clarify the essence of the accusations against Sapeza. Later, the information on the card was changed, now part 1 of Article 179 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus, under which the girl was convicted in Belarus, is indicated there.

In Belarus, Russian citizen Sapieha was sentenced to 6 years in prison under two articles – part 3 of article 130 of the Criminal Code (“Inciting enmity and sedition”) and part 1 of article 179 (“Illegal collection of information about private life”).

On April 14, the Prosecutor General’s Office granted Sofia Sapiega’s request to transfer her to Russia to serve her sentence. In August of last year, she was deprived of her residence permit in Belarus, in addition, she was denied a pardon.

Sofya Sapega was detained on May 23, 2021 together with Roman Pratosevich. In May 2022, the court sentenced her to six years in prison.

On May 3, the Minsk Regional Court sentenced Protasevich to 8 years in prison. On May 22, Lukashenka pardoned him.

The incident with the Ryanair plane, the detention of the blogger Protasevich and the reaction in the world

• On May 23, approximately after 14:00 Belarusian time, the press service of the Minsk airport announced the emergency landing of the Ryanair plane, which was traveling on the Athens-Vilnius route.
• According to FlightRadar, the plane flew over almost the entire territory of the western part of Belarus and turned towards Minsk near the border with Lithuania.
• According to information the press service of the airport, the pilots reported about the mine. The plane landed successfully. The Investigative Committee of Belarus opened a criminal case for knowingly false notification of danger.
• The operator of international airports of Lithuania reported that the plane made an emergency landing due to a conflict between a passenger and one of the crew members.
• Later, Ryanair stated that it received an order to land the liner in Minsk from Belarusian dispatchers. The press service of the Minsk National Airport confirmed that Belaeronavigation reported about the threat on board the Ryanair crew.
• At your disposal Alexander Lukashenko in order to escort the plane, a MiG-29 military fighter was taken to the sky. Later, the chief foreign policy advisor of the President of Lithuania reported that the Belarusian authorities also raised the Mi-24 helicopter.
• Minsk airport reported that there were 123 passengers on board. Later it became known that there were several more passengers who, after the emergency landing, remained in Belarus and did not fly on to Vilnius.
• Among the passengers of the plane was a blogger, the author of the Telegram channel “Belarus of Brain” and the former editor-in-chief of Nexta channels. Roman Pratasevichwhom the Belarusian authorities included in the “list of terrorists” for “organizing mass riots”.
• Protasevich, who wrote about the alleged surveillance of him at the Athens airport, detained in Minsk.
• The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania summoned the temporary representative of Belarus in Lithuania. President of Lithuania Gitanas Nauseda statedthat the plane was forced to land in Minsk.
• Actions of the Belarusian authorities condemned by many European leadersthreatened with serious consequences.
• After more than 7 hours of waiting, around 20:17 the plane took off from Minsk to Vilnius and landed in Vilnius around 21:30.
• Together with Protasevich in Minsk detained his girlfriend, a citizen of Russia.
• On May 24, the European Union summit demanded new economic sanctions against the Belarusian authorities and a flight ban.
• On the evening of May 24, Belarusian state TV channels showed Roman Pratasevich speaking about his guilt in organizing mass actions in Minsk. Relatives and friends of the journalist immediately drew attention on bruises on his face and unusual intonation, which may indicate possible long torture.
• A number of states and airlines banned flights to Belarus and in Belarusian airspace after the capture of Roman Pratasevich. They claim that such measures are taken for the safety of their own citizens.
• On May 28, Protasevich was placed in the KGB pre-trial detention center. The journalist’s girlfriend is also there Sofia Sapega, which is accused of “inciting enmity”. The lawyer managed to get to Roman only on the fifth day. A non-disclosure agreement was taken from her.
• Also on May 28, the Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg stated about the possible involvement of Moscow in the hijacking of the plane. On May 31, the North Atlantic Alliance limited access to its headquarters in Brussels to 5 accredited Belarusian diplomats.
• The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) announced the beginning of its own investigation into the incident.
• On May 29, the USA suspended the agreement on air traffic with Belarus and announced the preparation of new sanctions against Lukashenka and his entourage.
• The Proton mail service refuted the version put forward by the official Minsk about letters with information about false mining, which were allegedly sent from Swiss servers to several airports. There was only one letter. Earlier, the Palestinian bloc Hamas denied its involvement in the bomb threats, and the media found out that the threatening letter arrived only 24 minutes after the dispatcher’s warning.
• After a series of bans, the number of “Belavia” flights dropped by 80.5% in one week. The state-owned monopolist company on the air transport market is trying to fill a sharp shortage with new flights to Russia.
• On June 4, the European Union banned all Belarusian airlines from flying in the EU’s airspace and access to the EU’s airports.
• At the beginning of June, the state TV channel ANT showed Raman Pratosevich in the program of the head of the channel Marat Markov, which is called “Markov. Nothing personal.” Radio Svaboda does not publish fragments of this interview, because it is not known under what circumstances the conversation was recorded and whether Pratasevich could refuse to answer the questions that were put to him. Experts talk about the blogger’s high level of stress, fear and possible pressure, and associates and relatives believe that the “interview” was recorded under torture or the threat of torture.
• On June 8, after 11 days of absence, a lawyer was allowed to visit Protasevich Ines Alenskaya. He was investigated, during which he was not even allowed to go to the toilet for 7 hours. Roman contracted tonsillitis while in prison.
• On June 14, Protasevich was brought to a meeting of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus with journalists. Many journalists said that they do not believe that Protasevich speaks his words voluntarily. BBC journalist John Fisher left the hall, writing that the detainee would clearly speak under duress, and BelaPAN journalist Tatsiana Karaviankova said that she did not believe anything that was said, and expressed sympathy for the prisoner.
• On June 15, the director of Ryanair told how the Belarusian authorities pressured the captain of the plane and the crew.
• On June 16, the Russian media reported that the “General Prosecutor’s Office of the People’s Republic of China” thanked Lukashenka for the possibility of conducting investigations against Roman Protasevich.” In response, Ukraine declared that these were intrigues of the Kremlin, since “the actual control over the temporarily occupied territories is carried out by the occupation administration of the Russian Federation The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine demanded from the authorities of Belarus to comment on the information about the visit to Minsk by the so-called “prosecutor’s office” of the self-proclaimed republic.
• On June 25, Roman Pratosevich and Sofya Sapieha were placed under house arrest.
• On January 17, 2022, the ICAO sent a report on the incident to the authorities of all member countries of the organization after several postponements of the deadline.
• The text of the report is on 30 pages. Among other things, it includes the transcripts of the negotiations of the plane’s crew with the dispatchers and the diagram of the plane’s flight over Belarus with an analysis of the distance between the passenger liner and the fighter of the Belarusian Air Force.
• “The authorities of Belarus did not provide the necessary information,” says the ICAO investigation report on the Ryanair landing in Minsk.
• On January 20, the head of “Belaeronavigation” was charged in absentia in the USA Leonid Churohis deputy Oleg Kazyuchyts and two KGB employees in a conspiracy to commit air piracy. The indictment was filed in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York. According to him, he faces from 20 years of imprisonment to life imprisonment.
• The US Justice Department has concluded that Belarusian officials used a false bomb alert to force a plane carrying four US citizens to land in Minsk. According to prosecutors, it was necessary to arrest the opposition blogger Raman Pratosevich.
• Representative of “Belaeronavigation” Oleg Kazyuchyts stated in response that the filing of air piracy charges by American prosecutors against the heads of their company may be an instrument of pressure or provocation before the ICAO meeting, which will consider the report on the incident with the Ryanair Athens-Vilnius flight.
• On July 20, the ICAO published an official report on the incident, in which it stated that the Belarusian version of the events had not received any confirmation, the video and audio recordings were corrected and deleted, and the transcript of the conversations showed that the dispatcher of the team to the crew of the plane was dictated by the special services. The plane’s claim was false.
• At the end of October 2022, from the transcription of the new testimony of the Minsk air traffic controller Oleg Galegov it became known that during negotiations with the plane’s crew, not only the KGB employee was in the room, but also the general director of “Belaeronavigation” Leonid Churo, against whom the indictment was brought in the USA even earlier. They approached the attendant, who then informed the dispatcher and another colleague about the Ryanair passenger plane, which was about to enter the airspace of Belarus from the side of Ukraine. The attendant mentioned the alleged bomb threat against the flight and that the plane should be diverted, but advised the dispatcher to inform the Lviv dispatch center in neighboring Ukraine.