Russian citizen Sofiya Sapega was arrested for two months. She is in the KGB detention center, the BBC reports.
According to a lawyer, Sapega was questioned. She is a suspect in a criminal case. A preventive measure was chosen – the detention of two months. She was placed in a KGB detention facility. The Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of Belarus is currently investigating the case.
Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported to TASS that Sapega was detained “on suspicion of committing a crime in August-September 2020.” It is unknown exactly what crime Sofiya was charged with, but it is likely to be linked to her participation in the protests.
The girl’s mother told the BBC that her daughter left Belarus for Lithuania in August last year and did not participate in the protests:
“She left Belarus for Lithuania in August. She was getting ready for the studies. She was definitely not in Belarus. Let them check at the border the stamps when she left. It was about August 11-12, just after all the events. We were living in Minsk at the time. And she was with us. She said she wanted to go home [to Vilnius]. She must have left on [the bus] Ecolines. So she is suspected of being involved in the riots? That’s a hundred percent lie. She wasn’t here. What are they saying? She didn’t participate in the protests; she was with us. We were at the summer house on election day.”
Sofiya Sapega was detained on March 23 due to the forced landing of the Ryanair passenger plane Athens-Vilnius in Minsk. The plane’s forced landing was provoked by the Belarusian secret services to detain the blogger and journalist Raman Pratasevich.
