The president of the court has now to decide whether to grant the motion filed by Kazimieras Juraitis, who participates in the case as a third party.

This is the second disqualification motion in the case.

The first preparatory hearing was due to take place on October 21, but Vilmantas Ambrulevicius, the original judge in the case, was removed at the request of third parties.

The case was assigned to Janusoniene after the court's president ruled that Ambrulevicius' actions during the preparation for the hearing of the case and after the motion for his disqualification was filed could raise doubts as to his impartiality.

Prosecutor Sigita Vasiliauskiene of the Prosecutor General's Office has said earlier that the prosecutors asked the court to liquidate the association in view of Svencioniene's statements and the actions of the association’s members related to their visits to Russia.

Svencioniene and four more persons – Dmitrij Glazkov, Kazimieras Juraitis, Algirdas Paleckis and Mindaugas Ramoska – are involved in the proceedings as third parties.

The Prosecutor General's Office is also carrying out two pre-trial investigations related to the organization.

One of them is being conducted under the Criminal Code's article on liability for aiding another state to act against Lithuania.

The Prosecutor General's Office said in October that Lithuania's law enforcement authorities had carried out searches, served notices of suspicion and taken other steps as part of the probe into the Forum's activities.

The other investigation centers around Paleckis' signature on the association's founding documents as they were signed when he was already in prison serving his six-year prison term for spying for Russia.

The association came onto the law enforcement radar following a visit by its members to Moscow where they met with representatives of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation and held a press conference questioning the legitimacy of the election of the current Lithuanian government, and accusing it of causing economic damage and scaring its citizens about a possible Russian invasion.

Svencioniene and her associates earlier visited Belarus and met with Alexander Lukashenko, the neighboring country's authoritarian leader.

Last month, the Forum's members said they were planning to travel to Ukraine's eastern part occupied by Russia to observe the Moscow-organized sham referendums over the annexation of these territories.

Svencioniene later said she had not been able to go to the Donbas because of "very serious artificial obstacles".

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