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High treason case against Andrey Haydukow to be heard behind closed doors

 

The trial of Andrey Haydukow, a young man charged with high treason, will be held behind closed doors, Valery Vakulchyk, head of the Committee for State Security (KGB), told reporters on Thursday.

Mr. Vakulchyk said that he would not go into detail about Mr. Haydukow`s case before the judgment was announced. He predicted that the "defenders" of the accused would change their mind after the trial.

Mr. Vakulchyk revealed that one more person suspected of passing sensitive information to a foreign intelligence agency had been arrested in Belarus the previous week.

Mr. Haydukow’s mother said earlier this week that his case would be heard in the Vitsyebsk Regional Court. She expressed hope that the trial would be open to the public, and that the authorities would finally explain what her son was suspected of.

The pre-trial detention period for Mr. Haydukow has been extended until June 17. The date of the trial is unknown.

The 23-year-old Haydukow, a fifth-year student at the chemical engineering and technology department of Polatsk State University and a fitter in charge of instrumentation at the Naftan oil refinery in Navapolatsk, was arrested in Vitsyebsk on November 8, 2012. He was immediately taken to the KGB jail in Minsk and charged with spying.

At the end of the month, he was transferred to a detention facility in Vitsyebsk. On December 22, he was brought back to Minsk and placed in the detention center on Valadarskaha Street. Five days later, he was moved to the KGB jail.

KGB spokesman Alyaksandr Antanovich announced on November 13 that Mr. Haydukow had "gathered and passed political and economic information on the instructions of a foreign intelligence agency," and that he had been caught in the act of making a dead drop. An opposition group called European Belarus said in November 2012 that Mr. Haydukow had been arrested in connection with the distribution of a bulletin titled Charter’97.

According to European Belarus, Mr. Haydukow brought a portion of the print run of the bulletin for distribution in the Vitsyebsk region and was arrested when he was handling it for storage.

Mr. Haydukow was an opposition candidate’s campaign aide and an observer in last year’s parliamentary elections.

The Criminal Code’s Article 356, which penalizes high treason, provides for penalties ranging from up to 15 years in prison to the death sentence.

At the end of December, another young opposition activist, Ilya Bahdanaw, was given the status of a suspect in the Haydukow high treason case. // BelaPAN