Searches in the houses of activists in Vitsebsk: police looked for arms and explosives, seized fly sheets and flags

26.09.2005.

The police are actively looking for those behind the explosion in Vitsebsk on 22 September. 5 people are detained. Young opposition activists, whose houses were searched on 23-24 September, are also suspected, reports Radio Liberty. Organized crime department officers first asked questions about explosives but then collected fly sheets, party documents and white-red-white flags. The young activists believe that the law enforcement agencies use the complicated situation in the city to exert moral pressure on them, first of all.
Dzianis Dzianisau, the leader of the local youth branch of UCP, was not home at the time, however, the police explained to his parents that they were looking for the people who had organized the 22 September explosion, or for related evidence. However, according to their story the police spent most of the time in the son's room. After they found nothing, they took away CDs with the famous political cartoons, the documents Dzianis had brought from seminars in Poland and Ukraine, and also papers with signatures petitioning for one of the city streets to be named after Vasil Bykau.
The police followed almost the same scenario, searching the apartment of the Young Front leader Viktar Shliakhtsin, the place of a member of the youth society Sedmaya Gran Stsiapan Tsishutsin. They did not follow any explosive devices, but when the human rights activist Valiery Shchukin and a member of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee Paval Lievinau tried to enter the Tsishutsins' apartment, the police ordered them to leave the place immediately, promising to call in riot police in case of insubordination.

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