80-year-old Minsk citizen found guilty of insulting Lukashenka and sent to madhouse again

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The court found the pensioner Aliaksandr Lapitski guilty and sentenced him to compulsory treatment.

The Minsk resident was found guilty of publicly insulting the head of the Belarusian state, Prosecutor General Aliaksandr Kanyuk, as well as a number of Belarusian judges and public prosecutors. This was ruled by the Minsk Frunze district court on 12 July.

The first time the case was reviewed in April. The basis for drawing the retired criminal to responsibility was his addresses to the officials, in which he used obscene language.

Human rights activists point out that Lapitski did use such expressions, but he did not specify against whom they were directed specifically. Thus, according to human rights activists, the pensioner could have been judged in the administrative case, not criminal proceedings.

In his appeals Lapitski complained of illegal, according to him, sentence against his son, convicted of beating his wife, and commented on the explosion in the Minsk metro, in which, according to the pensioner, Lukashenka was involved.

In April, the Frunze district court found Lapitski guilty and sentenced him to compulsory treatment as examination showed that the man had a chronic mental illness, Belsat recalls. The man tried to appeal the judge’s sentence.

According to human rights activist Aleh Volchak, during the re-examination of the case on 12 July, the court invited four experts in the field of psychiatry, who had earlier given an opinion on the mental state of Aliaksandr Lapitski. “We have not received a response from the psychiatrist, what exactly Lapitski’s “nonsense” express itself,” said the human rights activist.

Human rights activists believe that the judge’s ruling to send Lapitski for inpatient psychiatric treatment under the special control is illegal.

Aliaksandr Lapitski is going to appeal the decision in the Minsk City Court.