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Prosecutor general says that election-day attack on Nyaklyayew is being probed

 

The Minsk City Prosecutor's Office is conducting a probe into the beating of Uladzimir Nyaklyayew on December 19, 2010, Prosecutor General Ryhor Vasilevich told reporters in Minsk on Wednesday.

The probe has not yet been completed and therefore an assessment cannot be given, Mr. Vasilevich said.

When asked about the wiretapping of telephone conversations by presidential candidates and the use of their transcripts during trials, Mr. Vasilevich said that each instance of wiretapping had to be examined individually.

If there are people who believe that the wiretapping of their telephone conversations was unlawful, they are free to file a lawsuit, he said.

Presidential candidate Uladzimir Nyaklyayew was beaten unconscious by men in black uniform half an hour before the closure of the polls in the December 14-19 election in an attack widely believed to have been masterminded by Alyaksandr Lukashenka's secret services.

Mr. Nyaklyayew was rushed to the Minsk City Emergency Hospital but was forcibly taken by plainclothesmen to the KGB detention center a few hours later. He was eventually charged with organizing "mass disorder" over a December 19 post-election protest.

In late January, Mr. Nyaklyayew was placed under house arrest.

On May 20, a district judge in Minsk gave him a suspended two-year prison sentence with two years' probation on a charge of "the organization and preparation of actions that are in gross violation of public order or active participation in them."

Soon after his sentencing, Mr. Nyaklyayew applied to the Minsk City Prosecutor's Office to investigate the attack on him.

On July 19, he underwent a forensic medical examination in connection with the incident. // BelaPAN