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Belarusian Christian Democracy demanding information about arrested priest Uladzislaw Lazar

Belarusian Christian Democracy (BCD) on Monday submitted a petition to the Prosecutor General's Office, asking it to release information about Roman Catholic priest Uladzislaw Lazar, who has been held in a KGB jail since the beginning of June.

Signed by more than 30 people, the petition asks why Mr. Lazar was arrested, what he is suspected of, whether his detention in the KGB jail is lawful, and whether it can be replaced with release on his own recognizance or house arrest, according to the BCD press office.

The public is paying close attention to the case, with more than 1000 people having signed an online petition for the release of Mr. Lazar, but the KGB continues to keep silent about it, the petition says.

News website telegraf.by reported earlier on Monday that a postcard for Mr. Lazar had been delivered back to its correspondent, which might indicate that the inmate had been transferred to another detention facility.

When reached by BelaPAN, KGB spokesman Artur Strekh refused to say anything about Mr. Lazar.

On August 1, BCD, an unregistered opposition party, announced that it was launching a campaign of solidarity with Uladzislaw Lazar and called on all Catholic believers and all Belarusians to send postcards of support to the KGB detention center in Minsk.

Yury Sanko, acting spokesman for the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Belarus, confirmed in late July that the Rev. Uladzislaw Lazar, minister of the Holy Spirit Descension Parish in Barysaw, Minsk region, was being in held in the KGB jail.

"We are aware of this, but we do not know exactly what he was arrested for,” he said.

This case is being dealt with by governmental agencies and attended to by the Apostolic Nunciature to Belarus, Mr. Sanko noted.

He said that he did not have enough information to link the arrest of the priest to a statement made by Alyaksandr Lukashenka on July 26 that authorities had recently arrested an officer of a Belarusian intelligence agency who had supplied information to “foreign states” through representatives of the Catholic Church.

Uladzislaw Lazar, a citizen of Belarus, graduated from Hrodna Seminary and then completed a theological course in Poland. He served in Maryina Horka and Rudzensk, Minsk region, before being appointed minister of the Holy Spirit Descension Parish in Barysaw in April 2013.