BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

14/01/2008

Officers of the local KGB department searched an apartment of member of the

Belarusian Association of Belarus Sergei Podsasonny in Gomel on 12 January, online paper Khartiya 97 reports.

It expands on the incident telling that first a city Central district militia officer knocked at the door of the apartment hired by the journalist and demanded to open the door as allegedly, noise in the apartment was disturbing the downstairs neighbours. After that the KGB agents appeared. They said they had search warrant, and demanded to open the door; when the journalist refused they warned they would break the door.A person who obstructed a way to Podsasonny's friends who wanted to support him introduced himself as KGB lieutenant Bozhak, Naviny.by adds.

The warrant said Sergei Podsasonny was suspected of organising the Young Front, involving pupils and students in the organisation with the purpose to discriminate the country, according to the journalist's interview to Radio Liberty. Six KGB officers were searching journalist's apartment, two of them introduced themselves as senior operatives Sergei Bondarenko and Andrei Melnikov, Naviny.by says. PC's hard disc, video-camera and flash memory stick were confiscated. KGB detective officer, senior lieutenant Melnikov signed the report of search. In November, 2007, the KGB agents took Sergei Podsasonny to the KGB department by force for a so-called conversation - they were interested if he was connected with the Poland-based satellite TV channel Belsat.

Source:

http://www.axisglobe.com/article.asp?article=1468