BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

01/12/2006

Lithuanian security officer's death in Brest is accident-Vilnius.

VILNIUS, December 1 (Itar-Tass) -- The death of Lithuanian diplomat and security officer Vytautas Pociunas in the Belarussian city of Brest in the small morning hours of August 23 was an accident, the Lithuanian Prosecutor General's Office said on Friday.

The prosecutors said they stopped the pre-trial investigation on suspicion of violent death.

Pociunas was a staff member of the Lithuanian consulate general in Grodno. He came to Brest on a business trip and fell out of the ninth story window of the Intourist Hotel.

"The death of the Lithuanian diplomat was an accident, as no evidence to violent death was found," the Belarussian Prosecutor General's Office said. Numerous medical tests held in Lithuania, Belarus and a number of other countries showed that Pociunas had alcohol in his bloodstream.

Meanwhile, Lithuanian politicians and journalists accused Belarussian and Russian secret services of killing the Lithuanian security officer.

Lithuanian prosecutors held an independent investigation with the consent of Minsk but found no evidence to the suspicion that somebody might have thrown the officer out of the hotel window.

Source:

http://www.tass.ru/eng/level2.html?NewsID=11042636&PageNum=0

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