One of the last remaining members of the Belarusian opposition’s Coordination Council at large, Maxim Znak, has been detained in Minsk by masked men, this is according to his colleagues.
Mr Znak’s apparent detention came a day after the most prominent opposition figure, Maria Kolesnikova, was detained at the Ukrainian border after she prevented authorities from expelling her by tearing up her passport
and jumping out of a car.
Maxim Znak, who had worked as a lawyer for jailed presidential hopeful Viktor Babaryko, had been due to participate in a video call but did not show up, instead sending the word “masks” to the group.
Reports say, an eye witness had seen Mr Znak, 39, being led down the street near his offices by several men in civilian clothes and wearing masks along with Svetlana Alexievich, a 72-year-old Nobel Prize-winning author.
The lawyer was the last of the seven members of the Council’s governing praesidium to remain free.
Others have been detained or forced to leave Belarus, in an intensifying crackdown by President Alexander Lukashenko’s government over a disputed election.
