English

No one allowed to attend first hearing in Haydukow’s trial

No one, including journalists and human rights defenders, was allowed to attend the first hearing in the trial of Andrey Haydukow, a young opposition activist charged with high treason, in the Vitsyebsk Regional Court on Wednesday.

Earlier this week, opposition activists and human right defenders petitioned authorities to make the hearing of Mr. Haydukow’s case open to the public.

The Belarusian Helsinki Committee asked the chairperson of the Vitsyebsk Regional Court to allow its representative, Pavel Levinaw, to be present at the trial, but the request was rejected without any explanations.

Mr. Haydukow’s mother, a resident of Polatsk, did not come to Vitsyebsk to support her son, probably because authorities are putting pressure on her, Mr. Levinaw told BelaPAN.

Meanwhile, the Belarus Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has published Mr. Haydukow’s letter to Tatsyana Sevyarynets, Belarusian Christian Democracy (BCD)`s coordinator in the Vitsyebsk region, in which the 23-year-old man reveals that he is suspected of offering to collect sensitive information about Belarus for the US Central Intelligence Agency.

According to Mr. Haydukow, the Committee for State Security (KGB) claims that his activities could have caused damage to the national security of Belarus and classifies them as an attempt to undermine the constitutional order of Belarus and impose a policy that does not meet its national interests. The KGB accuses Mr. Haydukow of trying to destabilize the social and political situation in Belarus and seeking financial assistance from the CIA through the US embassy in Minsk.

KGB chief Valery Vakulchyk announced in late May that the case against Mr. Haydukow would be held behind closed doors.

General Vakulchyk said that he would not go into detail about the case, but noted that the "defenders" of the accused would change their mind after the trial.

Andrey Haydukow, a fifth-year student at the chemical engineering and technology department of Polatsk State University and a fitter in charge of instrumentation at the Naftan oil refinery in Navapolatsk, was arrested in Vitsyebsk on November 8, 2012. He was taken to the KGB jail in Minsk and charged with spying.

KGB spokesman Alyaksandr Antanovich announced on November 13 that Mr. Haydukow had "gathered and passed political and economic information on the instructions of a foreign intelligence agency," and that he had been caught in the act of making a dead drop. An opposition group called European Belarus said in November 2012 that Mr. Haydukow had been arrested in connection with the distribution of a bulletin titled Charter’97.

According to European Belarus, Mr. Haydukow brought a portion of the print run of the bulletin for distribution in the Vitsyebsk region and was arrested when he was handling it for storage.

Mr. Haydukow was an opposition candidate’s campaign aide and an observer in last year’s parliamentary elections. He is a member of Belarusian Christian Democracy.

The Criminal Code’s Article 356, which penalizes high treason, provides for penalties ranging from up to 15 years in prison to the death sentence.

At the end of December, another young opposition activist, Ilya Bahdanaw, was given the status of a suspect in the Haydukow high treason case.