MINSK. Oct 7 (Interfax) - About 200 people have been detained for making insulting comments following the death of a Belarusian State Security Committee (KGB) officer in Minsk, Interior Minister Ivan Kubrakov said.
"Some 200 people have been detained. They have left comments in the wake of the death of a KGB officer," the Belarusian presidential administration's SB. Belarus Segodnya media outlet quoted Kubrakov as saying.
"Calls have been posted on the Internet to go and kill not only KGB officers, but also other citizens with differing views. As soon as they are detained, all of them start thinking about their families, their near and dear ones. All people have families, and the KGB officer who died in the line of duty also had a family. He sacrificed his life for the sake of his home country," Kubrakov said.
"Therefore, I call on everyone to think about it, to consolidate and to live in our country peacefully. I want to ask the heads of enterprises to inform their employees of how to behave on the street and how to behave on the Internet," the minister said.
As reported earlier, security officers conducted a special operation in Minsk on September 28 to identify people possibly involved in terrorist and extremist activities in Belarus. That day, a man residing in an apartment on Minsk's Yakubovsky Street opened fire with his hunting rifle, fatally wounding a KGB officer, codenamed Nirvana. The suspect was killed by return fire.
The suspect was identified as Andrei Zeltser, 31, an IT specialist working for EPAM, a major software developer of Belarusian origin. Zeltser's 40-year-old wife, who filmed the incident on her phone, has been arrested.