Have charges to Haidukou been changed?

The arrested civil activist is being transferred from Minsk to Vitsebsk. Andrei Haidukou's mother received this information from a lawyer, RFE/RL reports.

“I asked a lawyer to apply for a meeting with my son to discuss his case. The lawyer called me and said that he was being transferred to Vitsebsk. She learned it from investigator Aleh Barysevich. I don't know what to think. They told earlier that he was taken to Minsk because there is no KGB detention facility in Vitsebsk, where he had been detained. It turns out now that he may be kept in Vitsebsk. Maybe the charges have been changed? Or they decided to move him because the investigator from Vitsebsk has to go to Minsk. One can only guess. The lawyer doesn't know any details,” Volha Haidukova says.

She hopes the lawyer will manage to see Andrei Haidukou next week and clear up the situation. She hasn't received any letters from her son, though he wrote them. She doesn't know the Vitsebsk address to write to him.

Andrei Haidukou was thrown into the KGB jail in Minsk after being detained in Vitsebsk 20 days ago. The 23-year-old worker of the “Naftan” plant is charged with spying. Officially, the guy was detained as he was “putting a dead drop with the information interesting for foreign secret services”. Many find the accusation absurd. European Belarus civil campaign released a statement saying that the activist was detained for distributing Charter'97 newspaper. Human rights activists link the prosecution of Haidukou to his pro-opposition views and say it was an attempt to intimidate young activists.