Litesound frontman: "This is police brutality!"

Litesound frontman Vladimir Karyakin says how his brother and he were detained near Lukashenka's residence.

Brothers Vladimir and Dmitry Karyakins, members of Litesound band, were looking for a site to shoot a music video in a forest when police officers detained them, Salidarnast reports.

According to Vladimir Karyakin, they chose the forest near Zaslavl Reservoir on purpose.

“We live nearby. We know there are lots of picturesque roads in the forest...”

The musicians did not suppose Lukashenka has his residence there.

“It was a 'no entry' sign on the road, but it is not applied to pedestrians. There are thousands of such signs in Belarus!” Vladimir Karyakin says.

The Litesound musicians continued walking and saw a high fence and barbed wire.

“We stopped some 150 metres from the fence and began to read a map to know what is situated there,” the musician recalls. “A guard from an observation tower called out to us and said to come closer. He said a car with internal security guards had already been sent for us.

Two cars, one of them a police one, arrived in a few minutes. People in civilian clothes from the second car gave orders to police officers.

These men didn't introduce themselves. We were ordered to give them our cell phones. More people arrived. We explained who we were and said we were looking for a place to shoot a video. But they didn't believe us.”

The law enforcement officers searched the musician's car and found a video camera there. They were examining it for a long time, though it didn't contain any information, Karyakin says.

“They didn't allow us to call our parents, who were worrying. We earlier arranged to meet with them in the forest. Dima almost begged to let him call them!”

Vladimir Karyakin says the men used force only when they took away their mobile phones.

“They snatched the cell phone out of Dima's hands and twisted his arms. He managed to tell our parents what's going on. It was cold, but we stayed there waiting for a specialist. They didn't explain to us what was happening. We were lucky that our parents found us there by chance.

The policemen changed their behaviour as soon as the parents appeared. They decided not to wait for the specialist and we all drove to a police department. We spent about three hours there. A man in mufti, who didn't introduce himself, questioned us. We were set free at 10 p.m. No police reports were drawn up.”

Vladimir Karyakin is indignant over the incident:

“This is police brutality! They didn't have grounds to detain us. It's a pity that we lost the whole day. By the way, they were police chiefs. In my view, we have lots of other real problems in the country. They are paid for doing a serious work, but they detain us in a forest instead. I don't even mention how much petrol they spent. And we pay taxes for that!”