Fingerprinted, beaten, imprisoned
Another egregious case of reasonless
cruelty and lawlessness of sadists in uniform were told by the Kirdun family
from Minsk,
visitors of charter97.org website.
On Saturday, 12 November, their son Filip
was summoned to the city police department #1 of Frunzenski district of Minsk,
to the office #6 in Prytytski
Street, 108, allegedly to clear up issues related to
the military enlistment office. Filip immediately went there. As it turned out,
he had been invited by deceptive means to fingerprint him. Filip refused to be
fingerprinted on religious grounds, and reminded that last summer he wrote a
written explanation and denial to be fingerprinted.
Having no better ideas, policemen Aliaksandr Birchanka and Siarhei Dounar
tried to intimidate the young man, provoked him, and started to beat him up. As
Filip’s parents told, their son was standing defiantly and holding arms at
side, and policemen were pushing him. He was bearing it and repeating all the
time they had no right to treat him this way. It lasted for about 40 minutes,
after that Birchanka said: “It’s enough, we should crush him? Knock him down!”
Filip was stroke down, his arms twisted. He was handcuffed and made to stand in
horizontal position on one leg. Then he was fingerprinted by force.
After that handcuffs were removed, and Birchanka, who was especially cruel, said: “Let him lie and suffer.” In the corridor, Filip was lying on the floor in handcuffs for 2 hours. As a result his both wrists were scratched and swollen. The thumbs of his both hands became numb. Then he was placed in the isolation ward of the police department, however he was denied a possibility to inform his parents about his whereabouts.
Only at night criminal investigation officers of Central district told his parents that their disappeared son had been detained. On the next morning parents made policemen to call an ambulance to him. Filip was forwarded to the emergency care hospital for check-up, but doctors refused to admit him to hospital, tended to wounds and abrasions and sent him to the remand prison in Akrestsin Street until the trial.
