Unknown people enter Minsk office of Radio Racyja

Unidentified people entered the office of Radio Racyja, a Polish-based radio station, in Minsk at the end of last week.

Journalist Ryhor Sapyazhynski who arrived in the office at 8 a.m. on Monday noticed that its door was unlocked. “At first I thought that one of my colleagues was already there, but then I looked around and found no one,” he said. “Nothing had disappeared, but the computer that stores our studio records was on and so were the laptops of Henadz Barbarych and Alyaksandr Yarashevich, our two reporters arrested following the Chernobyl anniversary demonstration on Friday.”

Mr. Sapyazhynski said that no member of the staff of Radio Racyja had visited its office on Saturday and Sunday, and that Messrs. Barbarych and Yarashevich might have been the last people to leave it on Friday.

The police probably entered the office with the help of keys that had been seized from the two men together with other belongings, he said.

Messrs. Barbarych and Yarashevich were arrested on Friday night following the “Charnobylski Shlyakh” (Path of Chernobyl) demonstration, an annual event staged by opposition and environmental groups to mark the anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident.

They were held in a detention center on Saturday and Sunday and were scheduled to stand trial on Monday on charges of disobedience to police.