Photo: Tanya Kapitonova. All rights reserved.On an ordinary evening in March 2015, Alexey Rassadnev returned to his parents’ home, a middle-class Soviet-style apartment complex in Minsk. After dinner, Alexey, 29, headed out to see his girlfriend who lived with her child nearby.
When leaving the apartment block, he passed a neighbour who patted his shoulders in the place where police epaulettes normally go. He was trying to warn Alexey about the police. But Alexey wasn’t paying attention. By the time the young man saw the approaching officers, it was too late. He tried to run but was caught, beaten and dragged home to be searched. Alexey was lucky. The police found neither prohibited substances, nor paraphernalia. Alexey’s mother Galina says her son ate in front of the computer quite often, and she saw the police collect some dust and crumbs as evidence.
That same evening a search was carried out in his girlfriend’s apartment, but again investigators did not find anything. A urine test confirmed, however, that the young couple smoked marijuana. That was enough for the police. Investigator threatened to imprison them both and send the child to an orphanage, so they signed papers confirming that Alexey had proposed to smoke weed together. According to Belarusian law, persons cooperating with investigations are exempted from criminal liability. But after a few short months on freedom, Alexey was sentenced to five years in maximum security prison for possession of 0.164 grams of marijuana. The court ruled that the material evidence (a paper package and a cloth bag) must be destroyed, and allegations that the testimony was given under pressure were groundless.
