Minsk detains EU-bound opponents

Officials in Belarus said on Wednesday they had detained three top opposition figures who had boarded a train for Moscow. From there, the three had been due to fly on for the Friday meeting in Belgium.

The three who were arrested were Anatoly Lebedko, head of the leading opposition United Civil Party; Alexander Otroshchenkov, coordinator of the European Belarus activist group; and Sergei Kalyakin, leader of the leftist Fair World party.

"It looked like some wild special operation: plain-clothed people broke into our compartment and took us off the train by force," the AP news agency reported Lebedko as saying before his cell phone was taken away. "We have become hostages of Lukashenko."

All three were taken into custody, apparently on public order charges, pending a trial on Thursday.

The men were being held in a jail in the city Orsha, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) to the east of the capital, Minsk, Otroshchekov's wife, Darya Korsak, told the Belapan new agency.

Korsak said the men were initially stopped on suspicion of transporting illegal drugs, but that police later charged them with disturbing the peace aboard the train.

Reports of secret travel-ban list

In recent months, President Alexander Lukashenko has restricted the movement of members of the opposition, claiming that connections between the country's pro-democracy groups and EU governments are proof that the West aims to promote regime change in the former Soviet republic.

Earlier this month, the Lukashenko regime began to ban critics from going abroad, with those affected learning about it when they tried to leave the country.

Officials have not commented on reports that a list has been compiled of journalists, opposition activists and human rights defenders who are forbidden from travel.

The move is likely to worsen relations between Belarus and the EU, which has already imposed sanctions on Lukashenko's regime over its crackdown on dissent.

rc/acb (AP, dpa)