Rechytsa Dweller Wins Lawsuit Against Police

• 6.03.2020, 14:57

Video records from surveillance cameras helped the case.

The Rechytsa court canceled the protocol on administrative violation of a local resident Andrei Karbalevich, who was detained last December. He was accused of disobeying the police, arrested and fined for BYN 54, Radio Svaboda reports.

The story of the detention was then made public by the Belsat television channel. Andrei Karbalevich with acquaintances was waiting for a taxi near a private house, they held one of them under his arms because he was drunk. A police car drove up to the company, but at first the law-enforcement officers had no questions.

The company went home, but the police again drove up to Karbalevich’s acquaintances, and then to the man himself when he was sitting at the bus stop.

Karbalevich claims that the policeman sharply pulled his arm, which made him hit his head on the handrail of the building. The police officers laid him face down on the ground, pulled off his clothes, and began to beat him with rubber batons, twisting his arms back. Later, they handcuffed the man and led him to the house where the first car was. The reasons for the detention were not reported to him, the policemen only smiled in response to his questions.

There were three surveillance cameras on the building from which the company was leaving — footage from them showed significant discrepancies between the police report and what really happened. They wrote that Karbalevich allegedly “did not obey” a policeman who was half a kilometer away from the place of “disobedience”.