OREANDA-NEWS. A picket in support of a former employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Latvia, Oleg Burak, who was detained by the State Security Service on suspicion of spying for Russia, is held on Thursday in Riga. Several dozen people gathered near the courthouse of the Vidzeme suburb of Riga, demanding his release, a media correspondent reports from the scene.

According to the organizers of the picket, Burak has been in prison for nine months and is regularly subjected to severe psychological pressure. "It is symbolic enough that we have gathered outside the third power building - the judiciary - and under the Latvian flag. We live in this country and we want to live in this beautiful country, but what we see today is spinning harder and harder nuts and increasingly our beloved country is turning into a marasmic police state. I am absolutely not ashamed of these words, I feel it the hard way", said the co-chairman of the Latvian Anti-Fascist Committee Joseph Koren, addressing the crowd.

"This is called a police state. The man did something disagreeable to the regime. Therefore, I am here and thank everyone who stands with the posters" Freedom to Oleg Buraku", and we demand to stop the police mess", he added. 

In mid-October last year, the security service on suspicion of espionage in favor of Russia detained Oleg Burak, a Latvian citizen born in 1956, who worked for a long time after the restoration of independence in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He retired at the end of 2006. Arrest was chosen as a preventive measure against him. During two searches, data carriers containing more than 13,000 files, two self-made firearms, ammunition, explosives, and equipment for operational work, which individuals are forbidden to buy, store and use, were seized from Burak.