Beaten Reporter Tells Circumstances of Detention

Inde­pen­dent reporter Fil­ip War­wick was detained on March 25 near Vic­to­ry Square and tak­en to the depart­ment on cit­i­zen­ship and migra­tion of the Par­ti­san dis­trict of Min­sk (zavu­lak Stachanaŭs­ki 5). The deten­tion last­ed 6 hours.

It was the first time that he vis­it­ed Belarus, tak­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty of visa-free entry for 5 days’ stay.

He was not on assign­ment, had no accred­i­ta­tion, and dur­ing the deten­tion pre­sent­ed him­self as a for­eign tourist.

The moment of deten­tion:

“Four burly men in riot gear had me in the air and threw my legs first into an OMON truck for detainees – inside there are 4 to 5 cells, all appear sim­i­lar to a gym lock­er. The approx­i­mate size is 1metre x 1 metre.

A young OMON man inside the truck, though not wear­ing riot gear, punched me into the cell, as I land­ed on my back, he stood on my ankle, kicked my thigh, fol­lowed up with a kick in the head, thank­ful­ly I was hear­ing a thick wool­ly hat, that absorbed part of the impact.”

At the police depart­ment:

“About 3 hours into my deten­tion, and spon­ta­neous­ly, I was vio­lent­ly picked up by two men in the office and led into the cor­ri­dor. As I was being dragged away, I remem­ber the female police offi­cer from the room where I had been sit­ting, named Olga Ivanov­na, senior lieu­tenant, just fol­low the men, with no reac­tion. I shout­ed at the top of my voice for help, peo­ple from var­i­ous neigh­bour­ing office rooms along the cor­ri­dor peered their heads out. One of the burly men shout­ed some­thing at them and all dis­ap­peared as quick­ly as they had appeared.

Two well-built plain-clothed men, per­haps either police or OMON, twist­ed my arms behind my back, which result­ed in great pain, flipped me upside down, threw me onto the floor, stood on my ankles, while one of the men applied his knee onto my spine. This result­ed in crush­ing my rib cage onto the floor, for a cou­ple of sec­onds I could not breath, nor catch my breath, and I start­ed to choke. This brought about some con­sid­er­able laugh­ter among these men.

With hand­cuffs applied they threw me against the wall, kicked my feet aside, and force­ful­ly went through all my pock­ets. There was an air of sheer vicious­ness in how they went about this — I was already hand­cuffed.

No one intro­duced them­selves. I was not informed of the rea­son of my deten­tion. I asked police offi­cers for their names: Senior lieu­tenant — Olga Ivanov­na, Senior lieu­tenant Ivan Ivanovich, Sub-Colonel Alexan­der Alexan­drovich.»

The police phoned a woman Tania Rudenko who act­ed as an Eng­lish inter­preter. The detainee asked her three times to con­tact the embassy, but she refused. Over the 6 hours of deten­tion, he asked Police at least 10–15 times to con­tact the UK embassy.  

The police drew up two state­ments. Doc­u­ment 1 was writ­ten by police­man Olga Niko­laev­na, that had 4 sig­na­tures. This doc­u­ment was not shown to the detainee, nor was a copy pre­sent­ed. The detainee had not giv­en a state­ment.

The 2^nd state­ment (writ­ten between 20:00/21:00) – OMON per­son­nel with no tags or rank, dic­tat­ed the state­ment (called pro­to­col) to Olga Niko­laev­na, his details were men­tioned sev­er­al times.

This doc­u­ment was not trans­lat­ed nor shown, and he can­not ver­i­fy if it was signed – he did not at any point in time give a state­ment nor was asked to present one. No doc­u­ments what­so­ev­er where giv­en upon his release.

Could the deten­tion have been avoid­ed? “OMON jumped on me and threw me into the truck, so no.”

The advice for for­eign­ers – don’t walk alone and have all embassy details.

By the way, the reporter called the embassy, but cell phone net­work was down.