Photo via newlife.by

Pastor in Belarus was fined 350 thousand rubles

On Monday, March , 10th, Slava Goncharenko received a phone call from the court of Moscovsky district of Minsk, informing him that on this day at 10.30 the court hearing will take place about the case of pastor’s refusal to follow the prosecutor’s order that requires to give the representatives of the Emergency Ministries free access to the building of New Life church. In such way pastor was informed about the court session only 45 minutes before it started, reports New Life church press centre.

Case was tried by a judge Tatyana Motyl’. She made a verdict according to 23.1 clause of the Administrative Code of Belarus «Failure to fulfill the orders of the officials while fulfilling one’s functions» and fined pastor 350 belarusian rubles (~US$160).

Slava Goncharenko plead not guilty, saying that neither he nor other believers of the New Life church have to fulfill illegal demands of authorities, including the prosecutor’s order that requires to give the representatives of the Emergency Ministries free access to the building.

Lawyer of the church Sergey Lukanin was questioned in the court hearing as a witness. He explained that the decision to deny the representatives of auditing organizations of access to the building was made in the common meeting of the church members and it was forced, because the case about the return the community its building is still not solved and the hearing of this case in the Supreme Economic Court was suspended almost one year ago, which denies the church of the court defense.

Regretfully, reasons of the witness as well as the reasons of the pastor Slava Goncharenko himself were not taken into consideration by the judge when she was making the verdict.

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[03/12/2008]

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