An American lawyer went on a lunch date in Moscow. Now he is languishing in a prison cell in Belarus

[ad_1]

Zyankovich’s wife, Alina Dzenezavets, says that according to the director of Nordic Rooms, the men – all in civilian clothes – put a headscarf over his head and put it in a car outside the hotel in the Moscow suburb of Ostankino.

She told CNN that Yuras was then taken across the Russian border in a convoy of three cars and driven more than 700 kilometers (435 miles) to the Belarusian capital, Minsk.

Dzenisavets says that she collected what happened to her husband through his lawyer appointed by the court in Belarus. She has had no direct contact with Jurassic for nearly three months.

At the same time, Alexander Fedota, Ziankovic’s lunch companion, was arrested. He, too, was transferred to Minsk. Fedota served as a spokesman for Alexander Lukashenko, in 1994, before falling out with the Belarusian leader. He went to join the opposition in the country.

A well-known writer in Belarus, he spent some time in prison after participating in a 2010 protest.

Upon arrival in Minsk, Zyankovich was transferred to the pre-trial detention center of the KGB. He received occasional visits from a lawyer, but officials at the US Consulate were unable to visit him in the weeks after he was removed from a Moscow street.

For the Belarusian authorities, Zyankovich’s arrest was part of a larger play – and they were about to make some dramatic allegations.

Six days after the kidnapping, President Alexander Lukashenko informed journalists in Belarus of a plot to assassinate him and kidnap his children, as part of an attempted coup.

“We discovered the involvement of apparently foreign intelligence services, most likely the CIA and the FBI,” Lukashenko said. “Customers flew in from the United States, [someone called] Ziankovic. We were chasing after them and watching them.”

The US State Department quickly responded that “any suggestion that the US government was behind or involved in the attempted assassination of Lukashenka is completely untrue.

Two others were arrested in connection with the alleged plot, among them Olga Golubovich, a former employee of Ziankovich’s law firm. All of them were charged with “conspiracy or other acts committed with the intent to seize state power”. None of them entered the call.

Belarus is also seeking the extradition of five others allegedly part of a conspiracy by the United States and Lithuania.

Konstantin Pechik, head of investigations of the Belarusian State Security Committee, later announced that Zyankovich had confessed and was cooperating with the investigation. Pesch told Belarusian state television that Zyankovich was involved in attempts to bribe members of the Belarusian security forces to join a plot to overthrow Lukashenko.

Alena Dzenivasets insists that the charges against her husband are absurd and that if he admitted it would have been to save his life.

When the Belarusian KGB discovered that Ziankovich was in Moscow, Beschek said, “We asked [Russians] About the possibility of sending a group of Belarusian customers to Russia. ”

Russia’s internal security service, the FSB, later said the arrests were a joint operation with the Belarusian KGB, with the aim of preventing “illegal activity”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has endorsed Lukashenko’s claim of a coup plot, complaining in his annual union address that even these blatant actions have not been condemned by the so-called collective West. No one seems to notice, and everyone pretends nothing happened. ”

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov doubled down on that claim last month, saying “it is hard to imagine that US intelligence agencies might not have been aware of such large-scale activity.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin discussed the alleged assassination plot during a call with President Biden on April 13.

The US Embassy in Minsk says it cannot discuss the case – and because Ziankovic has dual citizenship, consular officials do not automatically have the right to see him.

to kill the president

Dzenivasets worried about his health. She says her husband’s lawyer told her that “Ziankovic’s blood pressure is rising every day.”

“The medicine was with him in a suitcase, but he was not allowed to take it,” she told CNN.

For Lukashenko, allegations of a US-sponsored coup plot served several purposes: It allowed him to portray the opposition as dependent on a foreign power, ready to commit violence. In addition, cooperation between the Russian and Belarusian security services helped build rapprochement with Moscow.

To further the government’s narrative, Belarusian State Television produced a melodramatic documentary “To Kill the President”.

The program included secret footage of Ziankovich, filmed at the Avignon restaurant in Minsk in 2020. It’s August 21 – nearly two weeks after a disputed election that led to an explosion of popular protests across the country.

Ziankovic allegedly says, “I’ve spoken to some businessmen, I’ll see them then, and they’ll give me a restaurant for the first event. I also have the support of the Jewish capital of America.”

But the sound in the movie appears to have been manipulated. Ziankovic’s words did not match the movement of his lips.

“He does not hide his purpose,” says the documentary’s narrator. “His mission is to expose weaknesses, to recruit and to create an armed rebellion.”

Zyankovich’s wife Alina says that at the time the secret footage was being filmed, the couple was on a visit to Belarus to see family members and finalize a property purchase. “We wanted to have a home where we could meet family and friends in the summer,” she told CNN.

She said that they also want to vote in person in the presidential elections in Belarus, which took place on August 9.

Days after that lunch in Minsk, Alina says, Zyankovich was arrested. I noticed that they were followed up for several days after attending one of the many protests organized against the election result, which was widely considered fraudulent and which gave Lukashenko a fifth term as president.

Joras spent ten days in what was called “administrative detention”. Alina says her husband went on a hunger strike while in detention, and when he was released he headed straight to the Polish border.

Soon, she told CNN, the couple decided to close their Minsk office “because it became too dangerous for Jurass to come to Belarus, and because we didn’t want to support the dictatorship by paying rent, utilities and taxes.”

Ziankovich has a long history of opposing Lukashenko as a member of the Belarusian People’s Front (BPF). He was granted political asylum in the United States in 2011 and became a citizen in 2017, but has maintained contact with a number of Belarusian opposition activists. In 2016, he ran for elections to the House of Representatives of Belarus, and had previously tried to raise funds in the United States for the BPF.

His decision to visit Moscow for a number of meetings in April — using his Belarusian passport — gave the Minsk authorities the opportunity they had been waiting for: to portray at least some of their opponents as tools of hostile governments.

It is still not clear when Zyankovic and his associates will be tried.

And his wife doesn’t know when she’ll be able to talk to him, let alone see him. The last time they spoke was on April 11, when he called her at her Houston home to wish her good night, hours before setting off on that fateful lunch date with Alexander Fedota.

.

[ad_2]