← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · londo
Thread ID: 15370 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2004-10-20
2004-10-20 06:42 | User Profile
Tue Oct 19, 8:06 AM ET Europe - AP
By YURAS KARMANAU, Associated Press Writer
MINSK, Belarus - An American employee of philanthropist George Soros' Open Society Institute has been arrested in Belarus by agents of the country's KGB security police, the New York-based Foundation said Tuesday.
Ilya Mafter, who also was a consultant for the United Nations (news - web sites) Development Program, was arrested Friday, the institute said.
Belarusian KGB chief Leonid Yerin said late Monday that Mafter was arrested on fraud charges after being suspected of having "misappropriated some of the funds entrusted to him," the Interfax news agency said.
"We are perplexed by the arrest of Ilya Mafter, who is working on a project benefiting Belarus and its people," said Aryeh Neier, the Open Society Institutute's president. "We urge the Belarusian authorities to release him without delay. The OSI is extremely concerned about his health and welfare."
The Belarus branch of the Soros Foundation closed in 1997, citing government harassment including the expulsion of its director and the seizure of its assets.
[url=http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041019/ap_on_re_eu/belarus_us_arrest_1] Read the rest here. [/url]
Background: George Soros, a Hungarian-born Jew who escaped the Holocaust by fleeing to London as a child, is ranked the 28th richest person in the United States (with a fortune valued at $7 billion) by Forbes magazine.
[url=http://judaism.about.com/library/2_americanjewry/bl_soros.htm] Reference Here. [/url]
2004-10-20 21:15 | User Profile
londo,
Too bad Ilya Mafter can't be sent to a Siberian Gulag.