Shklou: court reluctant to make policeman compensate court expenditures
On 6 February the Mahiliou Region Court
turned down the appeal of the Shklou citizens Ina Khanrytsialiova and
Serafima Yakauleva who had won at the Shklou District Court in an
argument with the police officer Tadarenka. The woman asked the
regional court to exact from him the money they had spent on
advocatory services.
However, the judge Maimusava upheld the
verdict of the district court, according to which no expenditures
were to be compensated. The judges refused to comment on their
decision and hurried to get out of the court hall as soon as the
announcement of the verdict was over.
According to the human
rights defender Barys Bukhel, the judges consulted one another for
quite a long time, about 40 minutes, before issuing the verdict.
"The women turned the attention of the Shklou District
Court to the fact that the Shklou District Court had confessed the
groundlessness of the administrative charges issued to them by the
policeman. The women had to hire a counsel to get the due defense at
court. They paid 900,000 rubles for his services. As far as the
policeman brought a groundless administrative case against the women,
he was to have compensated these expenditures as well as the state
fee," says Mr. Bukhel.
The human rights defender says
that now he is waiting to be presented with the court ruling in order
to appeal it to the head of the Mahiliou Region Court.
Bear
in mind that the judge of the Shklou District Court stated in his
verdict that though the participation of counsels in administrative
trials is regulated by part 1 of Article 2.8 and paragraph 5 of part
1 of Article 4.1 of the Process-Executive Code of the Republic of
Belarus on Administrative Offenses (PECAO), the code does not provide
for compensation of such expenditures.
Barys Bukhel blankly
disagrees with such a position and considers it as a defect of the
PECAO.
"If some legal norm is absent in the legislation,
part 2 of Article 21 of the Civil Process Code obliges the court to
take decisions on analogy with some other law which regulates such
situations. What concerns the giving case, the Criminal-Process Code,
part 5 of Article 163 "Exaction of process expenditures"
provides that the process expenses are to be compensated by the state
if the accused is justified or the criminal case is dropped. As far,
all this is specified in the law and the judge of the Shklou District
Court could have done it, as well as the judges of the Mahiliou
Region Court," comments the human rights defender.
The
unlawful administrative cases against the mother and her daughter had
been brought back on 29 August 2012. They were a result of an
argument between neighbors about the border between their plots of
land. A policeman who was a good acquaintance of their neighbor,
decided to help her in the struggle against Serafima Yakauleva and
Ina Khamrytsialiova. He drove to them by a car, shouted on them and
then tried to pack them in the car. He didn't manage to do it, but
the women got some bruises as a result of his attempts. Later he
charged them with the "insubordination of lawful demands of a
police officer".