English

Five presidential candidates arrested

Five presidential candidates were arrested by police following an anti-Lukashenka post-election demonstration staged in Minsk on Sunday night.

Mikalay Statkevich was arrested after he attempted to leave Independence Square in a taxi. “The taxi was blocked by two vehicles and he was pulled out of the car, bundled into one of the vehicles and driven away,” Syarhey Martsalew, the campaign chief of the candidate, told BelaPAN.

Andrey Sannikaw, his wife Iryna Khalip and Leanid Navitski, a member of Mr. Sannikaw’s campaign team, were arrested when they were driving in journalist Ilya Kuznyatsow’s car. As Mr. Kuznyatsow told BelaPAN, the car was overtaken by a traffic police vehicle with flashers on. The three were ordered to get out of the car and put their hands on the bonnet. They were driven away and Mr. Kuznyatsow and another member of Mr. Sannikaw’s team were driven to the detention center on Akrestsina Street in another vehicle.

The car in which Ryhor Kastusyow, the presidential nominee of the Belarusian Popular Front (BPF), was being taken away from the square was blocked by two police vehicle and the candidate was driven to the Minsk district police department. “He suffered a head injury when the demonstration was being broken up,” BPF Chairman Alyaksey Yanukevich told BelaPAN. “After we walked a hundred yards away, he complained that his head was swimming. We helped him into a car parked nearby and attempted to take him to the home of a friend of his, but he was grabbed.”

Uladzimir Nyaklyayew, who had been beaten unconscious in a police attack on him and a group of his supporters and rushed to the Minsk Emergency Hospital before the demonstration began, was driven away from the hospital by plainclothesmen.

“Seven men in civilian clothes burst into his ward, locked his wife in a neighboring room and, despite her cries, wrapped him up in a blanket and drove him away,” Yuliya Rymashewskaya, spokeswoman for the candidate, told BelaPAN.

Vital Rymashewski, the presidential nominee of the Belarusian Christian Democracy party who also received a head injury during clashes between protesters and riot police in Independence Square, was arrested when he was walking out of the Minsk Emergency Hospital, where his injury had been treated and bandaged. “He was attacked by men in black clothes who threw him into a car and sped,” Dzyanis Sadowski, executive secretary of the party, told BelaPAN.

According to Mr. Sadowski, police also arrested Paval Sevyarynets, the candidate’s campaign chief, Mr. Rymashewski’s authorized representative Iryna Hubskaya and seven party activists from other cities.

Activists of a campaign called “Rights Defenders for Free Elections,” have reported that a total of some 200 people were arrested.

Among those arrested was Aleh Hulak, chairman of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee.