Minsk - A US citizen in charge of an anti-organised crime NGO has been visited in a Belarusian prison for the first time by his lawyer, the Belapan news agency reported Friday. Emanuel Zeltser, director of the American-Russian Law Institute (ARLI), has been held in a KGB jail in the former Soviet republic since March 12 on unspecified charges.
Vladena Funk, Zeltser's secretary and a Russian national, was arrested at the same time, when the pair arrived in Minsk on a flight from London.
Mark Zeltser, the brother of the detained US citizen, told reporters he had hired an independent lawyer in the Belarusian capital Minsk to act as counsel in the case.
The lawyer met with Emanuel Zeltser on Thursday, he said.
Belarus' government has banned representatives from the US embassy in Minsk from visiting Zeltser as well.
Relations between Minsk and Washington are at rock-bottom, due to wide-ranging economic sanctions imposed by the US on Belarus, according to the US because of Belarus' authoritarian government and human rights abuses by the country's President Aleksander Lukashenko.
"They (US embassy personnel) have been incredibly helpful and they are trying to do whatever they can," Mark Zeltser said. "But because of the political situation their hands are practically tied."
The imprisoned Zeltser is according to his brother in poor health and requires medicines to treat diabetes and arthritis which are not available in Belarus.
A Thursday statement by the Belarusian government asserted Zeltser was receiving "absolutely adequate" medical care, including "all necessary medicines."
Prison medical staff were treating the diabetes but doing nothing about the arthritis, leaving his brother in substantial and continuous pain, Mark Zeltser said by telephone, citing information given him by the visiting lawyer.
Mark Zeltser on Friday remained outside of Belarus, as he has been unable to obtain a visa to enter the country.
Russian national Funk had also received a visit from a Belarussian lawyer "apparently appointed by a court, as I have no idea who this (second) lawyer is," Mark Zeltser said.
Belarus' KGB, despite media reports for more than a week saying it is holding Zeltser and Funk in a detention facility outside Minsk, on Friday continued to deny knowledge of the pair.
"No, as before I know absolutely nothing about that," said Valery Nadtochaev, a KGB spokesman.
Zeltser in the late 1990s sued Russia's Inkom bank and the American Bank of New York for operating financial schemes resulting in the loss of tens of millions of dollars of savings by US depositors, and the laundering of billions of dollars of aid money given Russia by the International Monetary Fund and other donors.
He was targeted for a mob hit in 1998, and even a decade later Russian organized crime has a murder contract out on him, according to an ARLI statement.
