Entrepreneur Aliaksandr Makayeu Arrested after Meeting with Police Official

On 12 January Aliaksandr Makayeu, leader of entrepreneurs’ movement, was detained in the center of Minsk just after he left the building of the Minsk city executive committee, where he had a meeting with Aliaksandr Naidzenka, deputy head of Minsk city police department. At the meeting they discussed the conditions in which those who had been detained on 10 January were kept on Akrestin Street.

‘Yesterday in the evening I spoke with Aliaksandr Naidzenka on the telephone. I said the chief of the special prison facility on Akrestin Street doesn’t allow to pass the arrested people not only food, but even warm cloths, and thus violates national and international laws, because it can’t be called other than torture by cold, when temperature in cell is 10-12 °C. Naidzenka offered to meet today in the morning, and we had a meeting at 10 a.m. He said he would phone to the administration of the prison after our meeting and assured me it would be possible to pass sleeping bags and some food even today. But when I left the building of the Minsk city executive committee, a police car drove up to me and I was detained,’ Aliaksandr Makayeu said.

The leader of entrepreneurs was guarded to the police department of Maskouski district, where he was accused of ‘petty hooliganism’ and a report was drawn up. Trial is soon to take place in Maskouski district court of Minsk.

Bear in mind that Aliaksandr Makayeu was serving his administrative arrest on Akrestin Street, when the protest rally of entrepreneurs took place on 10 December. On 10 January he was detained on a bus stop in the Sukharava suburb of Minsk together with his minor son. But then he just spent two hours in Frunzenski district police department and was put under house arrest. In Makayeu’s view, only the child’s presence saved him from arrest that time.