Union says border incident details were concealed

A Lithuanian border guards’ union says authorities tried to hide the truth about an incident in which migrants allegedly attacked officers and attempted to drag one of them into Belarus, LRT reported.

The incident took place in late July, when four officers waited in ambush for migrants trying to enter Lithuania from Belarus through underground tunnels. The migrants were found digging a tunnel, but about two dozen of them then attacked the officers.

The incident was not publicly disclosed at the time. Authorities only reported that a tunnel had been discovered.

Rustamas Liubajevas, head of the State Border Guard Service, described the incident last week as a routine border incident. The news portal lrytas.lt later reported that the migrants had also tried to drag one officer into Belarus.

Vitalijus Jagminas, chairman of the trade union representing pre-trial investigation institutions, confirmed that the officers had been attacked and that one of them had either been carried or pushed towards the other side of the border.

The union said the incident showed that the service’s leadership only made public information it considered useful. It also claimed that officials had been instructed not to comment on or discuss the incident.

The State Border Guard Service said that much of the information circulating publicly was untrue. It declined to provide further details, saying that pre-trial investigations into the incident were under way. One of the investigations is being conducted by the border guard service itself.

Following the publication of the new details, Interior Minister Martynas Katelynas met with the prosecutor general. He said the Prosecutor General’s Office should assess whether the investigation should be transferred from the State Border Guard Service to another competent pre-trial investigation institution.

Katelynas said that if the circumstances reported by the media were confirmed, he would see no possibility for Liubajevas to remain in his post.

Jagminas called for broader changes, saying responsibility should not rest with one person alone and that the entire leadership team should leave. Dainius Gaižauskas, a member of the National Security and Defence Committee, also said that the chain of responsible officials should be examined.

A service investigation into the actions of the border leadership was launched last week at the interior minister’s initiative. Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius said the government should wait for the findings of an objective and impartial investigation before deciding whether responsibility should be assigned.