Publicité
Belarussian opposition leader detained
Main Belarussian opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich and other activists have been detained after a major rally in Minsk, opposition activists said.
About 7,000 demonstrators took part in Wednesday’s gathering, traditionally the opposition’s biggest rally of the year coinciding with the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
Milinkevich, who took on President Alexander Lukashenko in a presidential election last month, was driven away in a car to a police station.
“We were expecting a summons, but instead the OMON (riot police) came. They told Milinkevich he was detained, put him in a car and took him away to a police station,” his spokesman Pavel Mozheiko told Reuters.
Activists said Sergei Kalyakin, a communist and senior figure in the opposition movement, had also been detained. Vintsuk Vechorko, another veteran opponent of Lukashenko, was picked up on Wednesday night.
Milinkevich was summoned to the prosecutors’ office ahead of Wednesday’s protest and told to stay away from October Square – the site of big demonstrations last month against Lukashenko’s landslide victory, denounced as rigged in the West.
Publicité
Publicité
Les plus récents
