Police Take away from Hospital Zubr Activist Mikita Sasim the Day after Operation on Appendicitis

HRC Viasna obtained the information that in the morning of 16 March the coordinator of the youth movement Zubr was taken away from clinical hospital #9, where on 15 March he was operated on appendicitis. The police showed him a warrant of Baranavichy City Board of Internal Affairs and took him for interrogation concerning the criminal case that was brought against him for ‘evasion from military service.

It is the second time the police bring such criminal case against the youth activist. The first time, on 5 December 2005, Baranavichy CBIA refused to bring the case and turned up the request of the local military committee, because there was no evidence that M.Sasim evaded from the military service.

At 10 p.m. on 14 March near Pushkinskaia tube station in Minsk the police detained Mikita Sasim together with Nika Lazouskaia, Mikita Shutsiankou and Natallia Ushko. The people simply stood near the tube station and talked. The policemen pulled them into a police bus and took to Minsk Frunzenski Borough Board of Internal Affairs. There Mikita Sasim started to feel pain in abdomen. He was taken to a hospital and operated on appendicitis.

The human rights activist Valiantsin Stefanovich is indignant at the behavior of the doctors, who let the police take a way from hospital the person after the operation and states such actions are directly connected to the upcoming presidential election: ‘Of course, the criminal case against Mikita Sasim is aimed at his isolation on the eve of 19 March. I won’t be surprised in the case they would again stop it after the election because of absence of corpus delicti’, says Mr Stefanovich.