The lawyers of NGOs’ Legal Aid Network are defending the interests of persons detained on administrative charges during a peaceful assembly on November 19.

By decision of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the detainees were brought to the court today, shortly before 18:00, at the end of working hours. The lawyers were not informed about the above a reasonable time in advance.

At the moment, several judges are considering the cases. They are deliberately not granting the lawyers' requests to postpone the hearings for a reasonable period so that they have enough time to familiarize themselves with the case materials and to present additional evidence. In several cases, the trial was postponed for only 10 or 30 minutes, during which the parties were told to present video evidence and information about witnesses.

We believe that the court disregards the right to a fair trial, does not give lawyers the opportunity to properly defend the interests of their clients, and on the other hand, citizens are not given the opportunity to obtain and present evidence to the court.