Trial over “spies” to be held sneakily? :: Charter'97 :: News

Today military collegium of the Supreme Court of Belarus is to start proceedings in the case of the so-called Polish spies. “Four persons are to come to trial. Each of them is charged with collection of information and its reporting to a foreign state under on a task given by foreign intelligence,” the official report of the Supreme Court reads. “In order to ensure protection of state secrets the proceedings in the case is to take place behind the closed doors”. The four Belarusian officers face from 7 to 15 years of imprisonment.

In the middle of July on state TV representatives of the Belarusian KGB told about detecting a Polish “espionage network”. They told that one Russian and four Belarusian officers collected information about air defence system of the Russian-Belarusian union state for Polish intelligence. They were detained in the beginning of the year. Air Force officer Uladzimir Ruskin had been allegedly recruited by Polish intelligence during an attempt to transport alcohol via the border. Polish customs service found in his car a quantity of alcohol 5 times exceeding the norm. Polish intelligence allegedly offered to overlook the incident in case the military man would become a resident agent in Belarus. The TV presenter said that secret information was copied to a flash-memory, which was to be put into a hiding place in a car fire extinguisher.

On the next day after the TV reports Alyaksandr Lukashenka reshuffled KGB headship, and removed Belarusian KGB chief Stsyapan Sukharenka. Presenting a new KGB head Yury Zhadobin, the president called the case of Polish spies “a beam of light” in the work of secret services, noting that detection of the espionage network shows that there are “trustworthy, decent, honest people” in the KGB.

“The spies’ case was made public when clouds started gathering for the KGB leadership. They were to demonstrate power of the secret services,” the leader of the United Civil Party Anatol Lyabedzka said to Vremya Novostei.

An independent political analyst, Alyaksandr Klaskouski, says to Vremya Novostei that the scandalous case “in some way is continued by inertia”. “Today Minsk is not interested in plaguing relations with the West and Russia, that is why it is unlikely to try to evoke an additional response to the espionage scandal”.