The editor-in-chief of TUT.BY was detained in Belarus. The editorial office was blocked and searched

She and two journalists were suspected of unauthorized access to the website of a government agency.

Continuation: We accessed the site using someone else’s password: why were Belarusian journalists detained and why is this considered absurd

In Minsk, the editor-in-chief of the largest independent online publication TUT.BY Marina Zolotova, TUT.BY journalist Anna Kaltygina and journalist of the private agency BelaPAN Tatyana Korovenkova were detained, reported . the Investigative Committee of Belarus

The Investigative Committee suspected all three journalists of involvement in illegal access to the website of the Belarusian Telegraph Agency (BelTA), the largest state news agency. In total, investigators counted more than 15 thousand “unauthorized connections” to the computer system between 2017 and 2018.

The reason for initiating a criminal case was a message from the republican unitary enterprise BelTA about failures in accessing paid subscription services that were provided by the said enterprise to one of its customers. [...]

Significant harm was caused, expressed in the unlawful seizure and use of information protected from unauthorized access, as well as undermining the business reputation of the enterprise.

Investigative Committee of Belarus

The TUT.BY website reports on searches conducted in the morning at the Minsk office of the publication in the Omega Tower business center on Dzerzhinsky Avenue. The publication noted that security forces began to confiscate documents and summoned several employees for questioning at the Investigative Committee. Searches also began in the Minsk office of BelaPAN.

The founder of TUT.BY, Yuri Zisser, learned about the searches from his colleagues. He told the Sputnik agency that investigators stopped allowing employees into the office. “Today I wrote a letter to everyone not to go to work,” Zisser added.

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