Justice Minister: Lithuania had not passed along other Belarusian activists’ details to Minsk

“Thank Heaven, it seems that we have managed to avoid other similar incidents,” Lithuania’s Justice Minister informed.

Lithuania had not passed along information about other human rights activists, said Lithuanian Justice Minister Remigijus Šimašius on Thursday. His ministry had come under attack after disclosing bank details of two activists of Vyasna organization.

“Thank Heaven, it seems that we have managed to avoid similar incidents. The Justice Ministry had not passed along any other information about possible dissenters and human rights defenders,” the minister said in an interview to Žinių radija, DELFI reports.

On Wednesday the Justice Ministry informed that consulting with the Foreign Affairs Ministry, they check information about the data provided to Minsk this and last year under the legal aid agreement.

The Justice Ministry and the Foreign Affairs Ministry of Lithuania have come under criticism when it turned out that the Justice Ministry had offered Belarus information about money flows at the Lithuanian bank accounts of Ales Byalyatski, a human rights activist arrested in Minsk. Minsk had also received information about another representative of Vyasna human rights centre, Valyantsin Stefanovich.

High officials of Lithuania have offered apologies to Byalyatski’s family for this incident. The detained human rights watchdog is a suspect in tax evasion in Belarus.