"They Said That They Would Take Me to the Gestapo or Into the Forest": Gruesome Details of Mikalai Dziadok's Detention

The activist managed to convey outside the prison the story of the lawlessness of the masked punishers.

On November 12, the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported on the arrest of anarchist blogger Mikalai Dziadok. Then the department's press service claimed that the detainee "actively cooperates with the investigating authorities and gives confessions." At the same time, on the recording, published together with the police press release, it is clear that Dziadok was severely beaten. Now he is accused of organizing actions that grossly violate public order (Article 342 of the Criminal Code). From the person with whom Dziadok managed to talk in the detention center on Akrestsina Street, Mediazon learned the details of the anarchist's detention.

The source, who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons, told Mediazona that, according to Mikalai Dziadok, the security forces came to his rented apartment in the village of Sasnovy at about 11:00 pm on November 11. "They smashed the window, and seven SOBR and AMAP men burst in," recalls the source of the anarchist's story.

"They immediately started beating [him] to make him give a password to enter the system, then they began to choke him with a pillow. When [he] began to choke, he gave the password. Then [he] was beaten for a long time until he remembered the password for the telegram," the source says.

After that, for some time, Dziadok laid on the floor - the security forces did not allow him to raise his head, but the blogger remembered that they walked around the apartment. Soon they brought his neighbors as attesting witnesses and searched the apartment. "[He] was immediately told not to speak a word in front of the witnesses," the source of Mediazona reports.

"During the search, three bottles were taken out of a niche with tools, which [in the apartment] were not there; they had a very strong smell of gasoline. But the bottles were wrapped in a towel that he used in the kitchen," Dziadok recalled in a conversation with a source.

Lawyer Natallia Matskevich said that Mikalai Dziadok was beaten during his arrest. The defender filed a petition for a forensic medical examination.

"I can say that I had several clients who fled Chechnya after being tortured and were detained in Belarus for deportation. But I never thought that I would hear that such stories would happen in our country," Matskevich said, without specifying the details of the detention of her client.

After finishing the search, the security forces told Dziadok that they would now record a video. They pushed him into the closet and released tear gas there. "Then they took him out into the street and poured pepper gas into my face, right into his eyes. They said that if he didn't speak on the video, they wouldn't let me wash. They brought him into the house, and until they filmed the video, they did not give him to wash," the source of Mediazona recounts the words of the anarchist.

"All the time they threatened to rape, to urinate on him, they said that they would take him to the Gestapo or to the forest," the source continues.

At about half-past midnight, Dziadok was put into a minibus and taken to Minsk, to the Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime and Corruption (GUBOPiK) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The blogger told Mediazona's interlocutor that they put him down facing the floor there, and he spent four hours in this position.

"[They] demanded a password from VeraCrypt, from the hard disk, demanded to say who are the administrators of the channels, especially the [anarchist] Pramen and AChK. When he was silent, they beat him on the back with truncheons and kicks," the source quotes Dziadok's story.

They threatened him with rape with a truncheon, beat him on the hands, on the heels with an electric shock; when he raised his head, they stepped on it - this continued until five in the morning.

"They took the bottles that they allegedly found in the apartment and put the neck in their mouth, made them spit on them, then rubbed them. They gave me some papers to sign," Dziadok said to the interlocutor of Mediazona.

After that, the security forces demanded that the detained anarchist recite the text they had written to the camera - "they said that if he says something wrong, they will beat him. If he says something else about GUBOPiK, then they will take him out of the IVS and beat him again, and even harder."

According to the source, he does not know who mocked Dziadok - the participants in the detention and search did not introduce themselves and were wearing masks. They "promised" that the detainee will receive "seven or nine years," and if he tells something "about them," then "in the zone, he will be driven into the "petushatnya "and killed."

Dziadok was taken to the IVS on Akrestsina Street at about five in the morning on November 12. Now Mikalai Dziadok is in jail # 1.