One of Belarusian opposition leaders claims to have spent 3 days in KGB detention facility
MINSK. March 27 (Interfax) - Belarusian opposition activist Nikolai Statkevich, who had been unavailable for the past three days, said he had been held at a KGB detention facility.
"I was kept at a KGB detention facility since Friday evening," Statkevich told reporters on Monday.
Statkevich said he was detained on suspicion of plotting mass disturbances. "They wanted to charge me with preparing mass disturbances and armed actions together with a group of unidentified citizens beginning in 2011," he said.
He said the accusations "made me laugh" because he was serving a sentence related to the 2010 mass disturbances during that period.
Statkevich said his confinement was solitary and 'totally isolated' and he knew nothing about the events which took place in Belarus on March 25-26.
He also said he was taken to the Sokol neighborhood of Minsk and set free on Monday morning.
Statkevich explained his release with the unwillingness of the Belarusian authorities to spoil relations with the West again.
Statkevich intended to head the Freedom Day events in Minsk on March 25, in which many protesters were taken into custody.
Activists were detained in other Belarusian cities during the Freedom Day events, as well.
A number of Belarusian opposition leaders were unable to join the Freedom Day demonstrations. For instance, Movement for Freedom Chairman Yury Gubarevich, United Civic Party leader Anatoly Lebedko, and chairman of the Belarusian Christian Democracy party's organizing committee Vitaly Rymashevsky were under administrative arrest for preparing the Non-Parasites March in Molodechno on March 10, while co-chairman of the Belarusian Christian Democracy party's organizing committee Pavel Severinets was arrested for participating in a similar demonstration in Orsha on March 12.
The police detained another opposition leader, Vladimir Neklyayev, in the early hours of March 25, after he had returned to Belarus from Poland. The Belarusian media said he was held in a detention center of the Brest Leninsky district police and was hospitalized in a Brest hospital due to a hypertensive crisis afterwards.