REVIEW TOPICS:
Internal struggle between KGB and Interior Ministry of Belarus to reflect on forthcoming trial
Russian human rights activist detained by Kyrgyzstan’s security services
Secret CIA prison in Lithuania reportedly disguised under school of riding
Last Poland’s President-in-exile refuses to be vetted, says he never collaborated with secret services
Head of economic security department left Russian Federal Security Service’s directorate in St.Petersburg
Internal struggle between KGB and Interior Ministry of Belarus to reflect on forthcoming trial
Within the next few days a closed court session in Belarus will announce a verdict in the so- called case of policemen-hunters, newspaper Belarusky partizan reports. Several officers of the Ministry of Interior of Belarus, including the former head of the directorate on struggle against corruption, will be strictly punished for hunting in natural preserves. According to magazine Ogonek, they have climbed into another preserve, too, as they were engaged in investigation of corruption cases in the nearest circles of the Belarus President. This also has led to internal war between the Belarus State Security Committee (KGB) and the Ministry of Interior, and still will lead to significant changes among top officials, the magazine writes.
One of the key figures of the case is former Minister of Interior Vladimir Naumov.
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| President Lukashenko, son Viktor |
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He was fanatically loyal to President Lukashenko. However he perfectly understood, the more compromising evidence on the closest circle of the President he would report to the boss, the more his own positions become stronger, Belarusky partizan notes. Naumov showed decomposition of the high-ranking officials; he reported all received information on corruption among the top officials to the President and always insisted on acceptance of strict measures.
One of his mistakes was an attempt to chalk up with the chairman of the Belarus Tennis Federation, founder of the BT Telecommunications company, chairman of Beltexexport company, Vladimir Peftiyev, who is considered now the richest businessman of Belarus. Earlier it was his friendship with the former secretary of the Security Council Viktor Sheiman that secured his influence, now it is provided by affinity to the oldest son of President Lukashenko. Lilya Lukashenko, the spouse of Viktor Lukashenko, has been working in one of the key companies of Peftiyev’s business-empire, daily Yezhednevnik notes. The newspaper adds that « some resignations of known security forces officials with whom the businessman could not find common language for longer time, have again made him one of leaders of the Belarus economic establishment». Viktor Lukashenko has found economic base for the projects in Peftiyev’s person, the paper marks.
Viktor Lukashenko has been leaning on young, but not less arrogant comrades, chairman of the KGB Vadim Zaitsev, chairman of the Border Guard Committee Igor Rachkovsky whose family is close friends of the Lukashenkos. Viktor Lukashenko has appeared extremely arrogant and high-flying, he is characterised as distrustful and vindictive person, Belarusky partizan writes.
Viktor Lukashenko, the adviser of his father on national security issues, has been also supervising a new security service, the Presidential Operative and Analytical Centre. The centre is in fact a new, private security service of the oldest son of the Belarus President, the paper expands. It has incorporated three key directorates of the previous Security Council and is headed by Valery Vakulchik who many years worked as the chief of department of KGB military counterespionage in the Border Guard Service.
When in 2008, Minister Naumov turned against Peftiyev, the Ministry of Interior brought the first in history of Belarus criminal case on raider seizures of enterprises in Minsk. The suspects who participated in these actions were detained in Russia and all the threads were leading to top officials. Naumov had obviously gone it too far in struggle for clean ranks of the President’s closest circle.
From this moment the KGB started to openly hunting for Naumov's environment. Major-General Yevgeny Komarnitsky, the vice-chairman of the Border Guard Committee, was arrested for accepting bribes (he was released after Naumov's resignation).
The President charged his son Viktor Lukashenko to recheck all the facts on raiders’ case. As a result of this check, the main witness of this case was arrested by the KGB for quite another matter and he was sentenced to 7.5 years of imprisonment.
In February, 2009, Naumov put reciprocal blow on Viktor Lukashenko's environment. The vice-chairman of the KGB Zaretsky and the deputy head of the KGB directorate of Brest area Gromovich were arrested, the chief of the KGB directorate of Brest area Aksyuchich disappeared in Russia. Former KGB head Stepan Sukhorenko and Valery Vakulchik were standing as the following on turn, according to Ministry of Interior investigators.
In March operatives of the KGB receive a report that Naumov's right hand, the head of department on struggle against corruption Yermakov, had been periodically hunting together with his subordinate, Zhlobino district interior department official Leonid Minenkov. This was the reason for the criminal case against policemen-hunters. The KGB was carrying out total purge of police officials in the Gomel area.
In reply the Ministry of Interior started the massive attack on security service officers in the area. At the general session of security forces Naumov cursed Zaitsev, Zhadobin and Viktor Lukashenko and threatened to retire. As a result Naumov's subordinates were punished. As Belarusky partizan puts it, the directorate on struggle against corruption of the Ministry of Interior has been crushed, all criminal cases materials against close followers of Viktor Lukashenko have disappeared, more precisely, they have been taken away to the KGB ostensibly for check.
Now it is Viktor Lukashenko who is the actual head of the security forces of Belarus, the paper marks. Amendments to the Criminal Code have been initiated in the Belarus parliament, which actually abolish institute of public prosecutor's supervision with transfer of corresponding functions to the heads of the KGB, the Ministry of Interior and State Controlling Committee.
Russian human rights activist detained by Kyrgyzstan’s security services
Russian human rights activist, member of Memorial centre, Bakhrom Khamroyev, was detained in the south of Kyrgystan. According to local human rights activists, he was detained yesterday night in the city of Osh by agents of the State National Security Service, news agency Interfax reports. Local activist Izzatilla Rakhmatilayev was detained together with Khamroyev, news agency adds.
According to leader of human rights activist union Kalym Shamy, Aziz Abdrasulova, the two activists were detained by agents of security services in local office of radio Azattyk, a branch of the US-Congress funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Members of the Memorial told the press that the citizen of Russia Bakhrom Khamroyev arrived in the south of Kyrgyzstan from Kazakhstan’s city of Almaty on November 10 for gathering data on victims of religious prosecutions in Kyrgyzstan.
Khamroyev is kept in the building of Osh directorate of the the State National Security Service. As it became known, Khamroyev repeatedly received requirements from employees of security services to leave the region. The State National Security Service press centre told news agency Interfax that they did not have data on detention of the Russian human rights activist.
Secret CIA prison in Lithuania reportedly disguised under school of horse riding
A secret US CIA prison has been reportedly found out in Lithuania, Russian news agency RIA Novosti reports, referring to television channel ABC. According to a former CIA employee and one of the Lithuanian officials, it was located in the village of Antiviliai near to
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ABC reported on horse riding academy location |
summer residences of Lithuanian officials, 20 kilometers from Vilnius. Earlier an elite school of riding settled down in this building.
A territory in a large forest near Antiviliai until March 2004, was a riding academy and café owned by a local family. Then the family sold the property to Elite, LLC, a now-defunct company registered in Delaware and Panama and Washington, D.C. The CIA constructed the prison over the next several months, apparently flying in prefabricated elements from outside Lithuania. The prison opened in September 2004. According to ABC News, the CIA installed a concrete structure there where it could use harsh tactics to interrogate up to eight suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists at a time. (A full report can be seen on ABC's World News with Charles Gibson tonight)
"Everything that occurred in this prison is illegal", RIA Novosti cites human rights researcher John Sifton. "They included various forms of torture, including sleep deprivation, forced standing, painful stress positions."
Former CIA officials directly involved or briefed on the highly classified secret prison program tell ABC News that as many as eight suspects were held for more than a year in the Vilnius prison. Flight logs viewed by ABC News confirm that CIA planes made repeated flights into Lithuania during that period.
In August 2009, after ABC News reported the existence of the secret prison outside Vilnius, Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite called for an investigation. President Grybauskaite said on October 22 that she had "indirect suspicions" that a CIA prison really had existed in Lithuania. She called to carry out careful investigation., The head of the parliamentary National Security and Defence Committee Arvydas Anusauskas acted as an initiator of the decision which will allow committee to question all necessary persons on this case.
The prison was reportedly disbanded late in 2005 after reports in the press on use of secret foreign prisons by the CIA. The Lithuanian prison was the last "black" site opened in Europe, after the CIA's secret prison in Poland was closed down in late 2003 or early 2004.
Last Poland’s President-in-exile refuses to be vetted, says he never collaborated with secert services
According to Polish Radio, Ryszard Kaczorowski, 90, Poland’s last President-in-exile, has refused to sign a vetting statement declaring that he never cooperated with the Communist secret services.
Kaczorowski who served in London as the last President-in-exile from 1988 to 1989, a post created as part of Poland’s government-in-exile which existed from the Nazi occupation of Poland till the end of Communism.
Now he has been nominated to sit on the state-run Council for the Protection of Remembrance of Struggle and Martyrdom. Under Polish law, all public officials must sign the vetting statement.
“During the time in question I was in exile in London and had no contact with the secret services,” Kaczorowski told Poland’s public television, TVP. “If I am required to sign the declaration then I will resign my work on the council,” he said.
Andrzej Przewoznik, who leads the council, said that it was true that each member had to be vetted but refused to comment on individual cases. Polish Radio adds that the last prominent politician to refuse to sign the vetting declaration was the late European Parliament member and former Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek.
Economic security department head of Russian Federal Security Service’s directorate in St.Petersburg resigned
The head of Economic Security Service of the Russian Federal Security Service directorate in St.-Petersburg and Leningrad region Colonel Vladimir Bakhtin submitted the official report on resignation, online paper Fontanka.ru reports.
The FSB directorate confirmed the report, having told that labour contract with the Colonel was not prolonged due to achievement of the pension age by Bakhtin. However, according to Agency of Journalist Investigations, Bakhtin himself wrote the application on resignation by results of work in the division of the commission of FSB entrusted to him.
According to unconfirmed information, mentioned by Fontanka.ru, after check carried out by inspectors from Moscow, the chief of contraband department of the FSB directorate’s Economic Security Service Colonel Sergei Kharitonov, the employee of this department, supervising customs services, Lieutenant Colonel Bugayev, the assistant to the chief of Northwest customs, Colonel Chernokrylov, and also the assistant to the head of the Baltic customs, Colonel Yakovlev have also written official reports on resignation.
The FSB of the Russian Federation commission inspected the work of the regional directorate within the framework of investigation of case on possible connection of St.Petersburg customs officers and security forces members with illegal deliveries of goods which were sold at Cherkizovo market of Moscow.
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