PRAGUE, 22 February 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Tsimafey Dranchuk had left his flat in central Minsk to buy flowers for his wife's birthday. But he returned home in handcuffs after being seized by KGB officers.
The officers spent the next several hours conducting a thorough search of Dranchuk's apartment.
Dranchuk's wife, Volha Antsypovich, a journalist with the "Komsomolskaya pravda" newspaper, was at home at the time of the raid. "They didn't tell us what they were looking for. From time to time they made a joke, saying, 'Are you going to hand over the gun or not?' Then they began to confiscate all the documents in the apartment -- various leaflets, old newspapers, some notes by Tsimafey. The search lasted three hours," she said.
The officers eventually left, taking three boxes of documents. Dranchuk, an aide to imprisoned opposition politician Andrey Klimau, was taken to KGB headquarters for interrogation.
Speaking to RFE/RL's Belarus Service, Antsypovich said she had received no word of her husband's fate: "We do not have any information about Tsimafey. Every time we call the KGB, we get the same answer: 'There's no information available, you should have called earlier when, for example, there was someone in the reception room' -- or some other excuse. Or they say that the information will be available tomorrow. Tsimafey's mobile phone is now switched off, but just two hours ago it would ring when we dialed. When they were taking Tsimafey away, I saw that they put his phone in an envelope without turning it off. Maybe they did it on purpose, to keep track of who was calling him."
Hours later, KGB officers made another arrest -- Mikalay Astreyka, a coordinator for a group of independent election monitors observing next month's election.
The security officers again seized documents and computers and brought Astreyka in for questioning. Both Astreyka and Danchuk remain in KGB custody today.
Crackdown
Elsewhere, across the country, KGB officers staged numerous raids targeting opposition supporters. At least six activists and electoral observers were subjected to apartment searches, including Alyaksey Trubkin in the northwestern city of Polatsk.
"At 8:30 in the morning, four citizens introducing themselves as KGB officers came to my apartment, along with two witnesses [to observe the proceedings]. They showed a search warrant and began searching," Trubkin said. "When I asked them what they were accusing me of, they didn't answer. They confiscated brochures, books, the [Belarusian-language weekly] 'Niva' from Bialystok [in Poland], the [Minsk-based daily] 'Narodnaya volya,' business cards, materials from the Belarusian Popular Front and the Belarusian Language Society, and other petty things."
The raids came the same day as Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka handed a stern edict to the country's security forces to step up their vigilance ahead of the presidential vote next month.