The lawyer was detained on Monday morning, May 23. The court has found him guilty of disobeying the lawful request of a police officer (Article 24.3 of the Code of the Republic of Belarus on Administrative Offenses) and sentenced him to administrative detention for 15 days.
When interviewing witnesses in court*, Braginets’ defender asked the witness: "You claim that Vitaly Braginets has tried to escape. Do you insist on it?", to which the witness replied: "Yes, because it was a movement, smoothly turning into a run, towards the open gate. And at the same time, the citizen was addressing those standing at the bus stop. He shouted that he was illegally detained."
Braginets was supposed to serve his sentence and go free on the morning of June 7, however, the lawyer is still behind bars.
More information for lawyers and defendants as to declaring a person a political prisoner can be found here (in Russian, the link contains the recording of the webinar of Oleg Gulak, as well as its main subject points).
*The following link contains an analysis (written in Russian) of the transcript of the administrative trial of the lawyer, analyzed by the “Right to Defense” project: https://defenders.by/sud_braginets
