Pooling efforts to defend Andrei Kim

• 5.02.2008, 8:58

The first session of the Public Commission on defence of youth activist Andrei Kim, arrested at the entrepreneurs’ rally on 21 January, took place in Minsk on 4 February.

A criminal case on the article 364 of the Criminal Code (violence or threat of violence against a militia officer to impede lawful activity) was initiated against the 21-year-old activist of the youth campaign “Initiative.” The young man faces up to 6 years of imprisonment.

Guilty of social activity?

According to Alyaksei Bondar, representative of the public commission, “case of Andrei Kim is a purely political one.” “Moreover, it is a revenge of the authorities and personally Uladzimir Navumau on the demonstration of entrepreneurs, which scared them,” he thinks.

Activist’s mother Tatyana Kim insists on her son’s innocence. “I tried to explain to the prosecutor and the investigator that he is a man of faith from his childhood. He has helped people all his life: ill children in oncology clinic, the WW II veterans in hospital in Baraulyany,“ she says.