“Vedomosti”: Death of Byabenin is blow to opposition in Belarus

Under such a title an article in the Russian newspaper published an article about the death of the founder and chief of charter97.org website.

As “Vedomosti” writes, investigation of the death of the well-known oppositionist Aleh Byabenin, the founder and editor of charter97.org website continues in Belarus. The body of Byabenin was found hanged on September 3 in his summer house not far from Minsk. The main version of investigators is suicide.

On Saturday Andrei Sannikov, the leader of “European Belarus” political movement and a presidential candidate, was summoned for questioning to Minsk regional prosecutor’s office. Byabenin was a member of his headquarters and was to take an active part in the preparation to the elections.

“I have now even more doubts that it was a suicide,” Sannikov said to Charter’97 journalists. Investigators have not found out the exact date of Byabenin’s death. “If they cannot determine the time of death with certainty, how can they say why the person has died?” the politician expresses his surprise.

Byabenin did not have a motive for suicide, his colleagues say. “There is no suicide note, there are no problems at work, he has a dearly loved wife, sons, parents, a brother. He invited his friends for a premiere screening of a film, and then disappeared,” Charter’97 coordinator Zmitser Bandarenka comments on the official results of the expert examination.

“Byabenin has created the media resource on the Web with most visitors, Charter’97 is a radical opposition website, and it is clear that he had problems with the authorities constantly. If we accept the version that it was a suicide, the version of Belarusian authorities’ involvement is apparent. For many years the authorities were engaged in war with independent mass media,” a Belarusian political analyst Valery Karbalevich says.

On Sunday the European Parliament president Jerzy Buzek called upon the authorities of Belarus to carry out a full and transparent investigation of Byabenin’s death.

Valery Karbalevich finds most probable the version about involvement of special services which have already been implicated in disappearance and death of Dzmitry Zavadsky, a journalist of Russian First channel in 2000.

Recently attention of the KGB and the Interior Affairs Ministry of Belarus was locked on Charter’97. In spring a search was held in its news office and in the apartment of a journalist Iryna Khalip and Andrei Sannikov. Editor-in-chief Natalya Radzina was hit on the face during the search, she told then. The reason for the search was materials of the website about illegal rare animals hunting carried out by high-ranking workers of the Interior Affairs Ministry. According to Belarusian oppositional mass media, escalation of the “hunting case” was related to a war of two special services.