Police detain one more election agent of opposition candidate in Gomel :: Charter'97 :: News

One more election agent of Viktor Korneyenko, a member of the United Civic Party running for the Gomel Regional Soviet, was detained by police on Tuesday.

Officers approached Galina Skorokhod in the street and searched her bag, finding nothing.Another election agent of Mr. Korneyenko, Vladimir Katsora, was pulled over by traffic police in the city`s Gomselmash neighborhood and ordered to drive to a police department. "They told me that I might have killed a pedestrian and hidden the body in the trunk," Mr. Katsora told BelaPAN.

"Deputy police chief Nikolai Ryabtsev talked with me. He asked me to open the car`s door and trunk voluntarily. I refused demanding that a charge sheet should be drawn up in connection with the search. The police agreed and I opened the car for them. They found empty boxes and garbage in the trunk. Inside the car, they found an empty bag and a bundle of Sovetskaya Belorussiya copies that I was carrying to my mother-in-law who uses them as kindling material." The activist linked the detentions with the authorities` campaign of harassment against opposition candidates in the local elections.