Uladzimir Niakliayeu detained again

On Saturday morning, the leader of the civil campaign Speak Truth Uladzimir Niakliayeu was detained near Zhodzina on the way to an assembly of veterans of the war in Afghanistan.

According to the press-secretary of the campaign, Yuliya Rymasheuskaya, his car was stopped by the road police at the Zhodzina entrance. The car with Mr. Niakliayeu and his fellow campaigners was guarded to the Zhodzina District Police Department. There it was searched by the police inspectors Aliaksandr Buka and Dzmitry Drozd who explained that it looked like a stolen one, that's why it needed to be examined and the passengers had to be detained. The inspector spent about an hour making a list of the things they found in the car, paying no reaction to the request of the detainees to contact the police department of the Minsk Region Executive Committee, whose criminalistic section had performed this operation during the previous detention, on 9 July.

Eventually, Yuliya Rymasheuskaya phoned to the police department of the Minsk REC on her own initiative. Having consulted the administration, the duty policeman promised that the officer who had conducted the expertise on 9 July would contact her soon.

Uladzimir Niakliayeu regards this situation as another attempt of the authorities to hinder his meetings. 'They evidently took into account the experience of the unsuccessful detention of my car during the trip to Barysau. At that time, they detained only the car which let me get to the meeting. Now they not only detained the car, but stated that we had to explain who we were, where we were going and why.'

Mr. Niakliayeu and all other detainees were released at 2 p.m., having spent three hours at the police department.