Natallia Kaliada and Mikalai Khalezin are suspects in ‘mass riot’ case

The apartments belonging to the parents of Mikalai Khalezin and Natallia Kaliada, who are correspondingly the art-director and the director of the Free Theatre, were searched on 11 January, informs BelaPAN.

Mr. Khalezin wrote in his livejournal that the searches had been simultaneous. They were conducted by KGB officers, accompanied by local district police department's representatives. ‘The main question they asked was: where are Mikalai Khalezin and Natallia Kaliada? They asked the neighbors and gave the concierge their numbers so that he called them as soon as he knew we were home,’ the art-director writes.  

‘The day before I was provided with information that we were subjects in the ‘mass riot’ case as accomplices in the organization thereof,’ wrote Mikalai Khalezin. ‘t the same time, they know perfectly well that we are in the USA, as the leading US newspapers write about this. Moreover, it is difficult to imagine that they failed to know about Natallia's meeting with Hillary Clinton. If they do know all that, why do they need these demonstrative searches? To make our parents suffer? Well, ‘an eye for an eye’ then.’

Mrs. Kaliada was detained on 19 December in Minsk during the opposition's street action and fined 1,050,000 rubles (about $350) by the Zavodzki District Court of Minsk the following day. Her husband Mikalai Khalezin was blocked by riot police for a certain time in his own apartment.