Activist Koktysh detained in Germany


According to the local police, Ihar Koktysh, Deputy Head of Union for Democracy in Belarus, was detained upon the request of the Belarusian part: he appears to have been put on the Interpol’s wanted list.

As Mr Koktysh told Belsat TV he was going on a train to Berlin when police came and started checking the passengers’ documents. He had a Polish resident card and a travel document on him; now the activist is being kept in a police station. As Mr Koktysh does not speak German well he is still not aware of a kind of crime being incriminated to him. There is no interpreter at the station; Koktysh’s sister is talking to the police at the moment.

The young man puts down his detention to Belarus’ political persecution. Last year former presidential candidate Ales Mikhalevich was arrested in a Warsaw airport on demand of Belarus but released a few hours later.

In January, 2001 Ihar Koktysh was accused of murder. After he spent ten months in Baranavichi pretrial centre the charges were dismissed. When the Prosecution Office appealed against the decision of the court, Koktysh was detained in Ukraine by local policemen. They were to deliver him to the Belarusian authorities but in November, 2009 Amnesty International recognised him prisoner of conscience charging the persecution up to revenge for his support of Aliaksandr Milinkevich in the 2006 presidential elections. After the release he was granted political asylum in Poland where he has been living till now.

www.belsat.eu/en

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