List of detainees of Litvins’ club

Late in the evening of 8 February 2012 all 32 people detained in the Protestant Church “Ian the Baptist” were released from the Maskouski District Police Department of Minsk. Among them there were three under-aged – Vitaut Siuchyk and his schoolmates Kasia and Maryna.

Human rights defenders managed to establish the surnames of a part of the detainees:

1. Yury Bachyshcha
2. Maryna Barahukh
3. Antoni Bokun, the church priest
4. Katsiaryna Dalidovich
5. Zmitser Fedaruk
6. Aleh Hayeuski
7. Alena Vasileuskaya
8. Maryia Murashova
9. Dzmitry Piatrouski
10. Dar’ya Shein
11. Adam Shpakouski
12. Pavel Sitnik
13. Aliaksei Skrebeneu
14. Andrei Unuchak
15. Katsiaryna Unuchak
16. Sviatlana Vanchuk
17. Yury Yatsevich
18. Dzmitry Zhandarau


Bear in mind that after the detention the detainees were taken to the police department in a police bus with the light switched off. Sviatlana noted that riot policemen’s actions were harsh: “There was an elderly person among us, he was taken bad in the house. They called in an ambulance only at the police department, in 40 minutes!”

At first the police stated that they had anonymous information about keeping of drugs in the building. However, later they stated that they had the suspicion that there was gathering of a religious sect there. Though the door of the house was open, the police (who wore masks) smashed all windows and acted with groundless and excessive violence.

Personal details of the detainees were written down in the police department several times. Names, birth dates and place of work were asked. At about 10 p.m. participants of “Litvins’ Club” were started to be released in small groups.

"Litvins’ Club" is a discussion club. Its members got together today to discuss Frantsishak Aliakhnovich's book "In the Claws of the GPU*". Let us remind you, in this book Aliakhnovich told about his imprisonment in Stalin camps and prisons.

* GPU, or the State Political Directorate, was the secret police of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1934. Formed from the Cheka, the original Russian state security organization, on February 6, 1922, it was initially known under the Russian abbreviation GPU--short for "Gosudarstvennoye politicheskoye upravlenie of the NKVD of the RSFSR" (Государственное политическое управление НКВД РСФСР). Its first chief was the Cheka's former chairman, Feliks Dzerzhinski.