Belarus makes arrests after blast

Belarus has arrested several people in connection with the metro bombing in Minsk that killed 12 people, with the opposition fearing a crackdown.

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Belarus has arrested several people in connection with the metro bombing in Minsk that killed 12 people, state media quoted the deputy prosecutor as saying on Tuesday.

"Information is being worked on from several people," said deputy prosecutor general Andrei Shved, who is in charge of the investigation, quoted by the Belta news agency. "People have been detained."

He did not give numbers or say if those detained are formal suspects.

However Shved added that photo-fit images of those wanted individuals still at large had been prepared and would be released to the public in a short time.

Earlier, Opponents of Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, already reeling from a brutal post-election crackdown, raised fears of a new wave of repression after the deadly Minsk metro bombing.

Several leading opponents of Lukashenko are still in jail awaiting trial after the authorities arrested hundreds of people following a mass protest against his re-election on December 19.

With the authorities yet to firmly pin the blame for Monday's attack that killed 12 people on any single group, the opposition insisted they were not responsible but expressed concern the attack could be used against them.

"The act of terror is in the interests of those within Belarus and beyond who want to destabilise the situation in Belarus," said Alexander Milinkevich, one of the most prominent opposition figures who stood against Lukashenko in the 2006 presidential elections.

"These forces want to provoke an even tougher political repression and destroy our country's chance for European integration and weaken its independence," he added.

Leading opposition party Belarussian Popular Front in a statement urged the Belarussian security forces "to refrain from using this incident as a pretext for a new wave of political repressions."

It recalled that in July 2008, just after an bomb explosion at a concert in Minsk that wounded 50 but killed no one, over a dozen opposition activists were arrested. That crime has never been solved.

Yaroslav Romanchuk, one of the defeated opposition candidates in the 2010 elections swept by Lukashenko in a landslide, vehemently denied that the opposition could have been behind the attack.

"The mere mentioning of this version shows that the authorities need to change their relationship with the opposition not towards repression but dialogue," he told the Interfax news agency.




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Source: AFP



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