Police laid an ambush in opposition activist’s apartment :: Charter'97 :: News

On July 3, in Minsk, six Protestants - activists of the campaign for the right for liberty of conscience - were detained: member of the organization committee on the establishment of the Belarusian Christian Democracy (BCD) party Dzianis Sadouski, Tatsiana Usilovich, campaign’s press-secretary Siargey Lukanin, co-chairperson of the BCD organization committee Aliaksiey Shein and two minors - Yulia Koshaleva (14) and Feadora Adryieuskaya (16).

As D.Sadouski told, he was detained together with 22-year old Tatsiana Usilovich in his apartment #5 in Pushkin Avenue 41, yesterday at about 2 p.m. “Four men burst into my apartment - three in civilian and one more dressed in police major’s uniform. These people neither introduced themselves, nor explained the reason for the visit; they just searched the apartment and withdrew the religious Christian literature, writing paper and five issues of the bulletin of our campaign “Vestnik”. As we found out after a while, one of those in civilian was major Paval Kaleda. Then another person in civilian appeared in the apartment; the others addressed him as a colonel. We were treated with violence when taken to the interior department of Frunzienski district,” - D.Sadouski said. He remarked that what had happened was an outrage, and that his apartment had been robbed.

S.Lukanin informed that after he had received information on the first detention he rushed together with A.Shein to apartment #5, Pushkin Avenue 41, in order to rescue the papers with signatures collected within the campaign. “Aleksiey Shein had got the keys from the apartment from Dzianis Sadouski. But an ambush was made there, and the police detained us at about 4 p.m. One of them introduced himself as senior lieutenant Mikhal Kurakievich of the interior department of Frunzienski district. We refused to go to the interior department since no charges were raised, but we had to do that after we saw the police were ready to take us to the interior department violently,” - S.Lukanin pointed out.

According to Lukanin, minors Yulia Koshaleva and Feadora Adryieuskaya were detained on the same address at approximately 5 p.m.

All those detained were exonerated at 8.55 p.m. with no protocols drawn, after the explanation had been written.

S.Lukanin called the detention of the activists which lasted for 5 hours “illegal outrage and an intimidating action”. Nevertheless, he said they had managed to save the papers with signatures of more than three thousand people in support of liberty of conscience.