Belarusian Opposition Website Staff taken to the KGB

At 5 a.m. on 20 December Spetsnaz [Special Forces ] officers burst into the office of the Belarusian opposition Internet site Charter 97 and took away all those present, including the Chief Editor Nataliya Radina and volunteers. The journalists managed to inform of the raid before contact was cut off. Nataliya Radina’s last message said that she was in the KGB. According to information from «Газета.ru»,, at around three in the morning police officers and KGB arrived at the flat where Radina lives while her mother was there. One police officer and 4 KGB men in plain clothes looked around the flat, asked where the journalist was and left. During the evening of 19 December Nataliya Radina was brutally beaten when riot police broke up a demonstration by tens of thousands of people in October Square in Minsk against the presidential elections which most believe to have been rigged. The riot police kicked and used their shields to hit Nataliya on the head, At present the whereabouts of Nataliya Radina and the other Charter 97 people are unknown.