Politician Ryhor Kastusiou and political analyst Alyaksandr Fyaduta were detained by officers of the State Security Committee (KGB) as part of a criminal investigation under Article 108 of the Criminal Code (‘on directly emerged suspicion of committing a crime’), state-run news agency BelTA reports.
“As soon as immediate investigative actions and search operations have been conducted, full information on the situation will be provided,” the KGB statement reads.
As reported earlier, Maryna Shybko, the wife of Alyaksandr Fyaduta, made public the fact of her husband’s disappearance on Sunday. The woman said that the political commentator, who was staying in Moscow at that moment, had not been in touch for a day and a half. It is not ruled out that he was detained by Russian security services and handed over to their Belarusian colleagues.
“I am in Moscow now. Today [on April, 13 – Belsat] I reported the disappearance of my husband to the local police. When I got to know that my husband had been detained by the KGB, I contacted Moscow investigators. They could not explain to me where Alyaksandr was – in Russia or in Belarus as well as how he landed up in the KGB. The only thing they told me was that they were going to contact the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation over this issue, ” TUT.BY quotes Maryna Shybko.
Alyaksandr Fyaduta is also a literary scholar, political consultant and columnist at belsat.eu.
Ryhor Kastusiou, the leader of the Belarusian People’s Front (BPF) party and a 2010 presidential candidate, was detained in the town of Shklou (Mahiliou region) on Sunday evening and then taken to the notorious KGB remand prison Amerykanka. According to the newspaper Nasha Niva, Ryhor Kastusiou was a suspect in the criminal case opened under Article 342 of the Criminal Code (‘organisation and preparation of actions that grossly violate public order, or participation in them’).
