English

Swedish journalists released after three hours` detention

Three Swedish journalists, who were arrested in Minsk on Monday evening, were freed from the Maskowski district police station after three hours’ detention.

The camera crew of Sweden’s Television (Sveriges Television) were arrested in central Kastrychnitskaya Square as they were recording an interview with Raman Pratasevich, a member of an opposition youth organization called Malady Front, about “silent protests” held across Belarus last summer.

Vladimir Chudentsov of the Russian News Service and Belarusian freelance journalist Ilya Kuznyatsow, who accompanied the Swedish journalists, were grabbed together with them.

All of them were taken to the district police station.

Their phones were dead until 8 p.m. An officer of the police station told Andrey Bastunets, deputy chair of the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), that police had the right to detain anyone they wanted for an identification procedure.

Shortly after 8 p.m., Mr. Kuznyatsow phoned his colleagues in the BAJ to say that the police had put down their names, copied the video material and allowed them to go home.

Mr. Kuznyatsow said that the Swedish journalists had obtained accreditation from the Belarusian foreign ministry as required by applicable regulation. //BelaPAN