Police probe opposition activist's 'kidnapping'

The police have opened a criminal case over the robbing of Zmitser Dashkevich, the leader of the Czech-based international youth organization Malady Front. The Belapan news agency reports that on December 5, 2009 Dashkevich was to take part in the signing of an agreement to found the New Generation youth coalition. When the young man left his apartment in Minsk, he was attacked by five unknown men who seized his bag with documents and his mobile phone and forced hom into a van. He had been driven inside the vehicle for five hours, before he was dropped off in a forest near the village of Antonauka in the Lahoisk district of the Minsk region.

Upon reaching the capital, Zmitser Dashkevich filed a statement with the police. Today he received a notice saying that the police on December 14 opened a criminal case into the matter.

This is not the first kidnapping of youth activists. On December 19, 2008 Artur Finkevich, one of the leaders of the Young Belarus pressure group, was kidnapped in Minsk. On March 25, 2009 unidentified men grabbed opposition activists Nasta Palazhanka and Dzianis Karnou and took them to a forest. On November 27, 2009 youth activist Uladzimir Lemesh was kidnapped in central Minsk and taken in a vehicle without registration plates to a forest. In all of those cases, the police failed to find the people associated with those crimes.