MINSK. March 5 (Interfax) - A court in Minsk has dismissed an appeal from five protesters convicted for writing "Lest we forget" on the sidewalk in the vicinity of the place where another Minsk protester, Alexander Taraikovsky, was killed.
"The appeals from defendants in the 'Lest we forget' case have been processed by a panel of the Minsk City Court chaired by judges Tatyana Falkovskaya and Valentina Zenkevich. They dismissed all five appeals and upheld the sentence," the Viasna unregistered Belarusian human rights center said on its website on Friday.
On December 8, 2020, the Frunzensky District Court in Minsk sentenced Maxim Pavlyushchik, 26, to two years in a high-security penitentiary on counts of malicious hooliganism. Maria Babovich, 25, was sentenced to 18 months of probation on similar counts. Both were sentenced for writing "Lest we forget" on the sidewalk in memory of protester Taraikovsky, killed early in the morning of August 11.
Denis Grekhanov and Igor Samusenko, who renewed the writing, were sentenced to one year and six months in an open-type correctional institution, and Vladislav Gulis was sentenced to two years in a high-security penitentiary.