Viasna Volunteer Reveals How Recruited After Detention

Evgenia Babayeva said that she was not going to cooperate with the security services.

Evgenia Babayeva, a volunteer of the deregistered Human Rights Center Viasna, told the Dozhd TV channel that she signed papers on cooperation with the Belarusian special services to be free from detention.

Evgenia Babayeva was detained in Minsk on July 14. At that time, law enforcers searched human rights activists, NGO representatives and journalists. The girl was placed in the temporary detention facility for 72 hours. The volunteer said the DFI officers were not aware that she and her husband were Russian citizens and did not fully understand why they were searching home.

Later, she was charged with failure to pay taxes. All the time she was behind bars, DFI officers interviewed her without lawyers.

- On Friday, the day before the release, three DFI officers came to see me again without a lawyer. Later, they offered me to be an informant under a pseudonym to give information. Then they gave me some papers to sign. I understood that these papers were worth nothing. The main thing for me was to be free," Evgenia said. She also said that she had signed all the documents and had a pseudonym Zhanna.

The girl says she is not going to cooperate with the Belarusian special services. She took this step to break free and find herself in a safe place.