Russian lawyer: special services forced me to leave Minsk

An attorney Maxim Korotkov-Guliaev returned to Moscow today and explained what happened to him in Minsk.

- Couple hours after I checked in the hotel Grand Plaza in Minsk, they knocked on my door. Having opened the door I saw several people in mufti. Who they were and why they came they refused to tell. I suppose they were from Belarusian special services. They explained to me that my presence at the territory of the Republic of Belarus is undesirable. At the same time they suggested transferring me to Germany, which caused my perplexity, to put it lightly, cause I did not even have a passport for travelling abroad! In response to that statement they gave even more strange suggestion: “This is also a solvable problem”…. Of course, I refused, - he said to the “Special letter” web-site.

- Did they threaten you?

- No, these people were extremely polite unlike Moscow police, which searched my apartment illegally. They did not touch me, did not touch the money I had with myself, did not search anything. However they watched me day and night until I left Belarus.

- How would you explain such attention to yourself?

- I suppose, a number of factor are in play: firstly, the recent scandal, connected with Udaltsov’s meeting with Georgian politicians in Minsk, secondly, the recent search of my apartment, which I personally connect with the “Bolotnaya case”.

We would remind that Maxim Korotkov-Guliaev is an attorney of one of the people involved in the case of the protest actions in Bolotnaya square in Moscow in May. Before we worked on a famous case of Tikhonov-Hasis. Recently information has appeared, that the Russian lawyer was detained by Belarusian KGB in Minsk.