Yuras Zyankovich, an American lawyer of Belarusian origin, was brutally detained in Moscow, RFE/RL reports with reference to Zyankovich’s wife Alena Dzenisavets.
According to her, Zyankovich headed to Europe on business.
“In Russia, he was detained; in fact, he was simply abducted from the Nordic Rooms Hotel in Moscow. He was grabbed on April 11, but I did not know about it till yesterday [April 12 – Belsat]. Some plainclothes people rounded Yuras up. They said: ‘We are taking him, he is suspected of terrorism’. They waved their IDs, claiming they were representatives of the security services. Then a few persons entered his room and carried away all his things,” Alena Dzenisavets told RFE/RL.
Yuras Zyankovich is now in the KGB prison in Minsk, the wife added.
Since 2007, Yuras Zyankovich has lived in the United States, where he owns several law offices. Being a citizen of Belarus and the USA, the man resides in the city of Houston, but he regularly visited Belarus. In his native country he sought to be selected as a partiamentary candidate and revealed his presidential ambitions. In the wake of the 2020 election, he was sentenced to ten days in jail; while serving the term in the detention centre in Myadel, he went on a hunger strike as a sign of protest.
It is not the first time that a person visiting Russia has fallen into the hands of the Belarusian State Security Committee (KGB). On April 11, Maryna Shybko, the wife of political analyst and Belsat columnist 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. A day later, the KGB informed that Fyaduta was taken into custody as part of a criminal investigation under Article 108 of the Criminal Code (‘on directly emerged suspicion of committing a crime’), It is not ruled out that he was detained by Russian security services and handed over to their Belarusian colleagues.
