Vital Ruhayn, a reporter for European Radio for Belarus, was briefly detained by Belarusian border guards at the Hudahay train station at the Lithuanian border on Tuesday morning when he was traveling from Vilnius to Minsk.
Border control officers took away the journalist’s passport and his laptop computer under Article 8.9 of the Procedure Code for Minor Civil Offenses.
However, the passport and the laptop were given back to him after half ah hour and he was allowed to go on his way without a charge.
Mr. Ruhayn was one of the authors of a scandalous report highlighting police officers’ negligence in the performance of their security duties in the Minsk subway. Last month the reporter and some other journalists walked along the route of subway bomber Dzmitry Kanavalaw, who was executed in mid-March, carrying a large bag and were never stopped by police officers standing at station entrances.
After another reporter for the Warsaw-based radio station, Pavel Svyardlow, was arrested and sentenced to 15 days in jail on June 22 for allegedly using obscene language in a public place, Mr. Ruhayn left the country because there were fears that he would the next to be arrested in revenge for the subway report.
