Still no publicity in investigation into Andrei Haidukou's case

A month ago the relatives of the arrested activist learned that the term of the investigation was extended to March. A month passed, but nothing cleared: Haidukou's parents still know nothing about what awaits their son – whether he will be tried soon or the investigation will continue further.

The only thing which lifts the mood of the mother of the accused of "high treason" Andrei Haidukou is that the counsel was finally granted access to him. It happened soon after the statement of human rights defenders concerning the violation of his rights at the remand prison of the KGB.

"Two weeks ago the lawyer spent almost half a day with Andrei! It was quite surprising, as earlier he was rarely allowed to see him, and the meetings lasted only for some 20 minutes. The lawyer used to spend day by day sitting and waiting whether he would be allowed to meet him. This time he was allowed to meet with him, and they had a long talk. However, the counsel cannot tell me anything, because he gave the undertaking not to disclose the materials of the investigation," said Volha Haidukova.

She still cannot find anything else about the son. Four months have passed since the day of his detention, and the terms of the investigation have been prolonged several times already.

"In February they said the investigation will be prolonged till March. It is March already, but nothing is known. What are they doing with him? What is he charged with? He would have been convicted long ago if they had something concrete against him, but they keep procrastinating the time. Now he doesn't even try to explain anything to us, as he understands that such letters won't be sent to us. Still, we receive letters with crossed out lines. It means that he tried to write something, but it wasn't let through by the censors," continues the mother.

Andrei Haidukou is the only accused in the "espionage" case. However, there is also a suspect, Illia Bahdanau, another resident of Navapolatsk. He is still at large, no restraint has been taken towards him.

Still one more Navapolatsk resident, Yauhen Kanstantsinau, the head of the unregistered group "Union of Young Intellectuals", is a witness in the case (Andrei Haidukou was his deputy).

Friends and relatives of Andrei Haidukou think that his arrest can be explained only by his civil activities and oppositional views and consider as absurd the official information that the 23-year-old operator of Navapolatsk plant "Naftan" was detained for "intelligence activities" in favor of foreign security services, while making a hide with secret information.