Latvian journalist Yuri Alekseev, who is under investigation, fled to Belarus

Latvian journalist Jury Alekseev, who is under investigation, has left the territory of Latvia and is in Belarus, reports Aleksei Stefanov.

Alekseev is 66 years old and could be sent to prison for up to a year and a month on Tuesday, October 29, on charges of inciting hatred. Allegedly, posts calling for the extermination of Latvians were published in his name.

In addition, in the IMHOclub case, Jury could be sent to prison for up to 7-8 years under the article for “causing harm to the Republic of Latvia by a group of persons by prior conspiracy”. The maximum term under this article is 15 years.

Jury feared to repeat the fate of Oleg Burak, who was actually killed in prison.

According to Yury, he was preparing to escape all night. In the morning he left his apartment in Riga, got to Vilnius, bought a bus ticket to Minsk and crossed the border.

Now Yuri is in Minsk with friends, he slept and comes to his senses.

Yuri Alekseev is a Russian-speaking journalist and publicist working in Latvia. He is the creator and head of the online discussion platform IMHOclub. Alekseev has been a figure in the case since 2017, when he was detained by Latvia's State Security Service over accusations of publishing comments inciting ethnic discord.

The special service conducted a series of searches at the journalist's home, finding pistol cartridges and child pornography materials allegedly belonging to Yuri Alekseev. It is indicative that no prints of the journalist were found on the cartridges, nor was the gun found.

The linguistic conclusion, which determined that the comments were not written by Alekseev, was also against the investigation's version. Technical analysis showed that the journalist did not visit the sites where the texts attributed to him were posted. But this evidence of Alekseev's innocence was not taken into account by the court when passing sentence.