Andrei Ozharovsky, a Russian citizen, was detained last Friday in Ostrovets in Belarus’ Grodno Region, during a public hearing on the construction project of Ostrovets Nuclear Power Plant. He was subsequently sentenced to a seven-day arrest and is currently still in custody.

Later on Monday reports appeared on Russian newswires saying Ozharovsky “did not express an interest in meeting representatives of the Russian diplomatic mission” in Belarus. Bellona points out that these reports are a flat-out contradiction to fact. Below is a translated copy of the Environmental Rights Centre Bellona’s official letter to Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov.

Nikolai Rybakov
Executive Director, Environmental Rights Centre Bellona

Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation
Sergei Lavrov

Dear sir!

I am writing to you with regard to the detention in the Republic of Belarus of the famous Russian ecologist, expert with the international BELLONA Foundation, Andrei Vyacheslavovich Ozharovsky, a citizen of Russia.

Andrei Ozharovsky was detained in Ostrovets of Grodno Region on September 9, 2009, near the building where a public hearing was being held on the project of Ostrovets Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). As of this moment, he has been sentenced to seven days’ arrest. A well-known environmentalist both in Russia and abroad, Andrei Ozharovsky was in effect arrested for his intent to distribute at the hearing copies of a report entitled “Critical Notes on the State Environmental Impact Study of the Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant,” which he had co-authored and in which the NPP construction project is declared untenable.