New suspect in “spy” case

A witness in the spy case, Illya Bahdanau, has received the suspect status.

Illya Bahdanau, an activist of unregistered organisation from Navapolatsk Union of Young Intellectuals, told Salidarnost he had been questioned by Aleh Barysevich, a senior investigator in the spy case. The questioning took four hours.

“The investigator asked some details relating to the case,” Illya Bahdanau said. “He says Andrei Haidukou and I give different evidence, so an additional investigation is being carried out. I was given the status of suspect, but the measure of restraint wasn't changed.”

The activist says investigators need more time for an additional inquiry.

“The investigator said there were new questions in Andrei's case,” the activist says. “I was summoned for another questioning on January 9. As I understand I will have a face-to-face confrontation.”

It should be reminded that Andrei Haidukou's mother learnt on December 26 that her son had been transferred from Vitesbk to Minsk on December 22.

The 23-year-old worker of Navapolatsk-based Naftan plant is charged with spying. Officially, the activist was detained as he was “installing a dead drop with the information interesting for foreign secret services”. The charge is considered to be absurd by many people.

European Belarus civil campaign released a statement saying the activist was detained for distributing Charter'97 newspaper. Human rights activists link prosecution of Haidukou to his pro-opposition views and explain it by attempts to scare young activists.