English

Viktar Sheyman appointed presidential aide for special missions

Alyaksandr Lukashenka has appointed Viktar Sheyman as presidential aide for special missions, relieving him of the position of presidential aide for special missions within the Security Council.

Mr. Sheyman served in the former position since January 2009.

The head of state has also dismissed Valyantsin Rybakow as presidential aide to be transferred to another job, according to the presidential press office. Mr. Rybakow was appointed to the position in May 2006.

Viktar Sheyman was born in 1958. He was responsible for Alyaksandr Lukashenka's security during his presidential election campaign in 1994. He was appointed first state secretary of the Security Council on August 5, 1994, when the Council was established.

He was reappointed to the position after service as minister of internal affairs between October and December 1995. He was relieved of the post in 2000 to be appointed as prosecutor general. In January 2006, Mr. Sheyman was relieved of the position of head of the Presidential Administration, which he had held since November 2004, because of his job as head of the incumbent president's campaign team for the presidential election.

He was reappointed state secretary of the Security Council on March 20, 2006.

On July 8, 2008, Alyaksandr Lukashenka dismissed Mr. Sheyman, officially "in connection with his transfer to another job."

"I believe that you should not remain in the position after this incident, as you are guilty in the first instance, because you, by order of the president, have been organizing such events for 10 years, not one year. And you’ve have done nothing," the head of state told Mr. Sheyman at a government conference on a bomb explosion that occurred during an Independence Day concert in Minsk on July 4.

Opposition politicians and human rights organizations consider Mr. Sheyman one of the prime suspects in the disappearance of former Interior Minister Yury Zakharanka in May 1999, the disappearance of former Central Election Commission Chairman Viktar Hanchar and his friend, businessman Anatol Krasowski, in September 1999, and the case of Dzmitry Zavadski, a Minsk-based cameraman for Russia's ORT television network who went missing in July 2000. //BelaPAN