Belarus criticizes state’s handling of student death

PORTLAND – The Belarus government says the death of a student from the Eastern European nation whose body was found nearly three months ago outside a boarding house in Wells was a murder and that police should pursue the investigation more forcefully.

Aliaksei Vasileuski, 20, who died June 20, was employed in a food service job at a Maine Turnpike rest stop in Kennebunk as part of a summer work and travel program sponsored by the U.S. State Department.

Maine State Police said Vasileuski died of a single stab wound. Investigators said the death had “suspicious components,” but they stopped short of calling it a homicide and did not place it in any other category.

Vasileuski was one of two students from Belarus who were killed in the United States this summer and a third was the victim of an armed robbery, according to the Belarus government.

“We believe that it was a murder,” said Pavel Shidlovsky of the Belarus Embassy in Washington, D.C., “and we raised our concerns to the Department of State and to the Maine State Police. And unfortunately, although almost three months have passed since that date, we have no information on the cause of death and findings of the police.”

Shidlovsky asked that the FBI be brought into the investigations of the Maine death as well as the death of a 21-year-old woman who died Sept. 7 in Chicago. The Belarus Embassy did not release the woman’s name. It was unclear whether Illinois authorities have classified that death as a homicide.

The armed robbery occurred Aug. 15 in Rehoboth Beach, Del., the embassy said.

Investigators in Maine were still awaiting additional background about Vasileuski and hope to wrap up their investigation soon after receiving that information, said Sgt. Matt Stewart of the state police.

“From the evidence that we have gathered thus far during this lengthy investigation, we believe that we’ve been able to establish a solid theory as to what took place,” Stewart said.

After a message of protest from the Belarus government, the U.S. Embassy in Minsk on Friday posted a statement on its Web site rejecting the notion that Belarus citizens are unsafe in the United States.

“In both cases, as family members are very well aware, competent authorities in the United States are actively investigating the deaths,” the statement read.

Later Friday, the Belarus Embassy in Washington responded with its own press release.

“The chain of tragic incidents with the Belarusian students makes it evident that the competent American authorities appear to be unable or unwilling to provide security for citizens of the Republic of Belarus,” the statement read.

Belarus, which declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, has had strained diplomatic relations with the United States.

The U.S. Treasury Department in June forbade Americans from doing business with authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko and put a freeze on his financial assets in this country.

The State Department last month singled out Belarus when it announced a new initiative to combat kleptocracy, or what it described as corruption by high-level officials.