On March 16, 2005 a group of 20-30 nazi-skinheads, presumably with the support of policemen in civilian clothes, attacked young people who were returning after a rock concert that took place in the Minsk club “Leo”. As a result of the conflict three visitors of the concert were hospitalized: two of them received knife wounds, the third sustained craniocerebral injury. A 15-year-old boy, who received a knife stab in his back, was taken to the Children’s Surgery Center.

On March 16 there was a large rock event in the club “Leo”. Among the numerous audience there were journalists from major TV-channels and the press of Belarus (the First Musical Channel, the newspaper “Komsomolskaya Pravda v Belorussii”, etc.)

Hour and a half before the end of the concert a man in civilian clothes came up to the organizer of the event, introduced himself as a policeman and warned about a group of aggressive nazi-skinheads being by the club. Also he advised the visitors to not get out of the club. After it he walked around the club and left it. The concert successfully continued and ended about 21:30 when the first visitors started to go away. When people got out to the front steps, at a distance of 15 meters they noticed a group of 20-30 nazi-skinheads armed with bludgeons, reinforcement, and, as it turned out later, knives. The nazis first tried to attack a company of 5-8 girls and boys going home but the young people managed to hide in the club having run in the lobby. Guards immediately blocked entrance to the building. By that time alarmed visitors had gathered in the lobby and simultaneously poured into the street where they were repeatedly attacked by the nazis and had to defend themselves. During the fight Maksim Sh. of 15 years received a knife stab in his back; Artiom K. was badly wounded with two knife stabs in his liver. The third person was hospitalized with head injury. Some more people sustained minor injuries. After the assault the nazis, who hadn’t expected to meet with an adequate rebuff, ran away.

The injured were carried into the building, and people called in an ambulance rendering concurrently medical care by their own strength. Later the young people noticed a group of nazi-skinheads to all appearance on the other side of Skoryna Ave. (near the club). According to some witnesses there was a man with a video-camera among them. The group of these people was coming with confidence across the avenue taking out weapon in an emphatic manner. A part of the concert visitors following the instinct of self-preservation tried to hide in the club making a throng by the entrance. At this moment the group of the armed people fired gas weapon. There were at least two shots. The club’s premise, especially the lobby where the injured people were, was filled up with gas.

As it turned out these people were policemen in civilian clothes (they showed their documents, and besides some of them were seen later in the night in the Pervomayskii Department of Inner Affairs (one of the city’s police departments), and they held police portable radio transmitters), and among them there was a well-known Minsk neo-nazi and football hooligan Aleksandr “Footballer” Shcherbich, who was pointing a finger at some people among the concert visitors. The policemen in civilian clothes tried to use force to the pointed people, but the crowd became indignant and the pointed guys were left alone by the police.

Some time later the man, who warned the organizers about the possible assault of the nazis, was seen again in the club and this time he wore “strange” clothes - nazi-skinheads wore the clothes like that.

By that time several police cars drove up to the club, most likely they had been called by the club’s administration with an “alarm button”. And only in 10 minutes after the police’s arrival the ambulance appeared – it took them 40 minutes to come after the call! The police conducted themselves very easy, calmly and didn’t show any surprise at all the happened things. The policemen in civilian clothes, who had just fired at the crowd, were evenly speaking to the arrived troops.

At night the two injured guys were operated on and at the present moment they are in satisfactory condition.

To our knowledge right now 7 nazi-skinheads are detained for participation in the attack. The Main Department of Internal Affairs of Minsk City Executive Committee reports about several detained persons and opening of the criminal case for hooliganism. The words “fascist”, “skinhead”, etc. don’t appear in the case. Also it mentions that among the assaulters there were nazis not only from Minsk but from other Belarusian cities as well that allows to draw a conclusion that the action was planned.

We as participants and witnesses of the events have a range of natural questions:

- why didn’t the police prevent the conflict, although they had information about the possibility of attack?

- how to explain the shooting with gas weapon at the concert visitors, who were not aggressors in the conflict?

- what was the well-known neo-nazi doing among the policemen in civilian clothes and why they grabbed people pointed by him?

- why did it take so long police troops and ambulance to come to the place of occurrence?

- wasn’t it the provocation of the government and what it had as its object?