Mahiliou: Police Release Under-aged Activists

At about 8 p.m. on 27 August the under-aged youth activists Aleh Kashtanau and Rastsislau Pankratau were taken to a police station of Leninski district police department of Mahiliou. The detention was ordered by a deputy chair of Mahiliou regional police department, who stated that he had seen them handing out white-red-white stripes and passing a white-red-white flag to each other. 

At the police station the police confiscated from the activists 21 stripes and the flag. The present edition of the Administrative Code does not contain the norm ‘unregistered symbols’, that’s why such confiscation is plainly groundless. The police have 10 days to decide what to do with the confiscated items. 

During the detention each of the activists was interrogated by an inspector on cases of under aged persons, police captain Aliaksandr Filipenka, who was called to the police department by the duty policemen. The interrogations were attended by the detainees’ mothers. 

On their release the boys said that captain Filipenka paid much interest to their Lithuanian passport visas. He wanted to find out what they had been doing in Lithuania.