Today is the third day of trial over the former director of the Minsk Tractor Plant Mikhail Leonov. It took prosecutors two days to read out an accusatory statement, taking turns. The whole matter is laid out in 114 volumes of case materials and 39 attached files. Today Mikhail Leonov exercised his legitimate right – shared his attitude to the accusatory materials.

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The new order of issuing licenses for radio and TV broadcasting operations will apparently give the state additional opportunities for imposing ideological control. As is known, the distribution of frequencies now largely depends on the newly created National commission for TV and radio. However, the broadcasters remain clueless as to what criteria will be applied by the committee. Many journalists fear that the authorities are simply using this tool in order to get rid of certain independent media.

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Working Group of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, headed by the German parliamentarian Uta Tspaf, will visit Minsk on May 25-28, reports the news agency “Interfax”.

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Yesterday the independent regional TV channel “Mogilev-2” for the last time televised on air its “Regional News” newscast. In March this year the economic court ruled to confiscate 28 items of equipment, belonging to the studio. The incident was provoked by the Committee of State Control on the pretext of the alleged absence of the equipment’s hygiene certificates.

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On April 22 the president of Turkmenistan Saparmurat Niyazov at the meeting with the chiefs of the country’s law-enforcement bodies declared that he had reached an oral consensus with Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and some other CIS member-states, alongside with Turkey, on the extradition of Turkmen oppositionists. According to the source, Turkmenbashi instructed at this meeting the law-enforcement structures to shortly deliver all the embattled persons back into Turkmenistan. The source also reports that in the afore-mentioned and some other countries there function special operative groups of Turkmen national security forces, which had received a concomitant instruction.

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