Lithuanian Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė has turned to the Prosecutor General’s Office following President Gitanas Nausėda’s public announcement last week that two people had been detained in Poland on suspicion of attacking Russian opposition activist Leonid Volkov in Vilnius.
The minister is asking prosecutors to look into whether Nausėda violated the law by sharing this information.
“I consider the president’s actions to be irresponsible communication that undermined the mutual trust between Lithuanian and Polish officials and could have also compromised the pre-trial investigation,” the minister said in a statement on Tuesday.
“In order to clarify all the circumstances and evaluate whether any violations have been committed by disclosing this sensitive information without the authorisation of the prosecutor overseeing the case, I have turned to the Prosecutor General’s Office,” she added.
According to Bilotaitė, it is important to investigate the circumstances so that “such flawed practices, where politicians comment on investigations before officials do so, do not recur”.
Volkov, a close ally of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was attacked outside his home in Vilnius on March 12.
The president announced the detention of suspects last Friday. It was later reported by the Vilnius Regional Prosecutor’s Office that the detention operation was carried out on April 3.
Nausėda came under criticism for potentially compromising the ongoing investigation by disclosing this information publicly. However, the president said he shared the information after careful consideration.
Biotaitė also said last week that it is not the politicians’ job to announce information regarding cases such as Volkov’s. Nausėda retorted that “it is probably not up to Bilotaitė to tell me what I should or should not say”.
Frederikas Jansonas, Nausėda’s chief communications advisor, has told the Žinių Radijas radio recently that Warsaw last week gave the go-ahead for announcing the detentions, adding that Lithuanian law enforcement bodies were not warned about the announcement because active investigative efforts had been conducted solely in Poland lately.
“Has [Polish Prime Minister] Donald Tusk also been added to the list of those to be prosecuted?” Nausėda commented laconically on Bilotaitė’s move on Tuesday.
Further reading
Newsletter
Every Friday morning.
