29 March 2024, Friday, 9:25
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Chairman of Belarusian Constitutional Court sees no violations in enlarging powers of KGB, Interior Affairs Ministry and Financial Investigation Department

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Chairman of the Constitutional Court of Belarus Pyotr Miklashevich expects that warrants for arrests of suspects are to be issued by courts in the future.

“The Constitutional Court expects that in the future Belarus can pass legislation under which warrants for arrest are to be issued by a court,” Miklashevich said at a press-conference. He noted that the Constitutional Court checked the laws that law-enforcing agencies in some cases have a right for audio interception without a sanction of a prosecutor, and saw no direct contradiction to norms of the Constitution, Interfax informs.

As said by the Chairman of the Constitutional Court, this legislation was adopted with the aim to underpin the security and combat the crime. He noted that according to the existing legislation, an arrest warrant can be issued by heads of the Interior Ministry, the KGB, the Financial Investigation Department (FID) and the State Control Committee. P. Miklashevich noted that in the future legislation is to be passed under which procedural actions, including arrests of suspects, would be authorized by courts.

As charter97.org website informed, in August 2009 Alyaksandr Lukashenka initiated changes which allow the interior minister, KGB head and FID director the right to carry out some investigative and procedure actions (detention, search, telephone tapping and recording, search of premises, etc) without prosecutor’s sanctions. The Belarusian ruler said such high ranking officials are not less competent than a prosecutor giving sanctions.

According to Belarusian human rights activists, this initiative of the Belarusian dictator to Stalin-era “troikas”, when arrest warrants were issued by the head of the local NKVD branch, a secretary of the regional executive committee and a prosecutor in an extrajudicial procedure. It was done for crushing of “anti-Soviet elements”.

As human rights activists think, giving additional power to the heads of the Interior Ministry, KGB and FID can lead Belarus to the situation of 1937 and to even greater absence of control of the executive power headed by Lukashenka. In a crucial moment the authorities would be able to organize political purges and stamp out dissent.

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