Minsk offices of ‘Narodnaya Volia’ and ‘Reuters’ were ‘mined’

Police evacuated people from the building where offices Reuters news agency and Narodnaya Volia newspaper are situated, broke into and searched journalists’ offices.

The evacuation was carried out allegedly to check information about mining the building. What is strange, not all people were evacuated. People in some offices in the building were allowed to stay.

Staff of Reuters and Narodnaya Volya was not able to go to offices for some hours. Police broke into the office of Sviatlana Kalinkina, the deputy editor-in-chief of Narodnaya Volia. All offices of the newspaper were searched, the internet doesn’t work.

Officers of Almaz special detachment were looking for a bomb, while officer of other services were checking other storeys.

According to Narodnaya Volia editor-in-chief Iosif Siaredzich, there might be different versions of the event.

‘Firstly, judging g by comments, there are many crazy people who visit our website. We have criticized one of such sick people. I wrote an article titled Medical Case. Let the secret services work out this version, too. There are enough other versions as well,’ Siaredzich said. He also reminded that the newspaper reprinted Iryna Khalip’s article War for Oligarch’s Legacy from Novaya Gazeta.

It was known at 8:30 p.m. that no bombs had been found in the building, as it had been supposed. The police cordon was removed.