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Opposition youths say that KGB attempted to recruit them as informants

Five members of an opposition youth group called Malady Front (Young Front) revealed to reporters on Monday that officers of the Committee for State Security (KGB) had attempted to recruit them as informants.

The young men were contacted by KGB officers while they were serving jail sentences in the detention center on Akrestsina Street following their arrest in Minsk on December 19, 2011.

Mikhail Muski, Pavel Syarhey, Dzmitry Krymyanetski, Uladzimir Yaromenak and Raman Vasilyew said that they all had been threatened by KGB officers but none of them had agreed to cooperate.

"All of them were interviewed about their role in the organization," Mikalay Dzemidzenka, a leader of Malady Front, said at the news conference.

"All these interviews involved threats, threats of beatings, threats of expulsion from university, threats of punishment for membership of our organization. At the same time, our members were offered to sign papers saying that they agree to cooperate [with the KGB]."

Mr. Yaromenak, who was imprisoned following the 2010 post-election street protest in Minsk and pardoned by Alyaksandr Lukashenka last year, said that he had been warned by KGB officers that he could be sent back to prison if he did not agree to cooperate with them. After the young man served out the sentence, he learned that he had been expelled from Belarusian State Informatics and Electronics University despite having good academic performance.

Raman Pratasevich, who has not turned 18 yet, said, "On December 30 at around 1 p.m. someone knocked on the door, mother opened it. Two men entered the apartment, told me to pack my things as I was being arrested and would be taken to some boarding school. They put me into a car. I had some rough time in the car as they made many different threats."

"They brought me into a KGB office, where they had what they described as a 'preventive conversation' with me. They made threats again. The most ridiculous was that they threatened to make a report about me and show it on Belarusian Television." //BelaPAN