Belarus detains more than 50 at architectural firm in escalating crackdown

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Belarusian authorities detained more than 50 employees of an architectural firm in the country’s largest single raid this year, human rights activists said Friday, as part of what they described as a new escalation of repression under President Alexander Lukashenko.

Security forces searched the Minsk offices of ZROBIM Architects on Thursday and detained 52 people on suspicion of disloyalty, including the firm’s founder, Andrei Makouski, according to the Viasna human rights center.

Authorities had demanded the private firm hire a full-time “ideologist” to monitor its staff, the group said. On the eve of his detention, Makouski posted on social media that the studio had received a letter from authorities making the demand.

“The situation in Belarus is deteriorating, and we see that even suspicions of disloyalty are enough to trigger the largest single roundup of creative people this year,” Pavel Sapelka, a lawyer with Viasna, told The Associated Press. “This is a new practice for the authorities: first arresting people, hacking their phones and computers, and only then bringing charges.”

Authorities have increasingly used “extremism” designations to criminalize dissent, with penalties of up to 10 years for associating with groups or individuals labeled extremist. Sapelka said authorities recently designated 22 online chat groups used by prisoners’ relatives as extremist, a move he called “a blow to solidarity within the country” that could expose thousands of families to prosecution.

A close ally of Russia, Minsk has faced isolation for years. Lukashenko has ruled the nation of 9.5 million with an iron fist for more than three decades, and the country has been sanctioned repeatedly by Western countries — both for its crackdown on human rights and for allowing Moscow to use its territory in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Lukashenko’s rule was challenged after a 2020 presidential election, when tens of thousands poured into the streets to protest a vote they viewed as rigged. They were the largest demonstrations since Belarus became independent following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

In an ensuing crackdown, more than 65,000 people were arrested, thousands were beaten, and hundreds of independent media outlets and civil society organizations were shut down. Prominent opposition figures either fled the country or were imprisoned. Viasna says 913 political prisoners remain behind bars.

Five years after the mass demonstrations, Lukashenko won a seventh term last year in an election that the opposition called a farce.

Belarus has recently freed some political prisoners to try to win favor with the West. Since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, Lukashenko has released hundreds of prisoners, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski and key dissident figures Siarhei Tsikhanouski, Viktar Babaryka and Maria Kolesnikova.

Most recently, Lukashenko last month ordered the release of 250 political prisoners as part of a deal with Washington that lifted some U.S. sanctions, the largest one-time release of political prisoners in the country.

The United States has responded to the releases by lifting sanctions on the Belarusian potash fertilizer industry and the national airline Belavia.

But rights groups say the repression continues. Viasna reported that authorities have begun revoking passports of released political prisoners who have traveled abroad, including Bialiatski, who left Belarus after five years in prison and said his passport was revoked.

“This is yet another form of transnational repression aimed at complicating the lives of deported political prisoners outside the country,” Bialiatski told the AP. “The authorities continue their repression and are trying to ritually sever our ties with Belarus.”

FILE - Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko plants young trees during a subbotnik, a Soviet-style Clean-up Day, in the village of Alexandria, Belarus, Saturday, April 17, 2021. (Maxim Guchek/BelTA Pool Photo via AP, File)

FILE - A protester holds a banner, old Belarusian and Lithuanian national flags during a protest demanding freedom for political prisoners in Belarus near Medininkai, Lithuanian-Belarusian border crossing point east of Vilnius, Lithuania, Tuesday, June 8, 2021. (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis, File)

FILE - Police officers kick a demonstrator during a mass protest following presidential election in Minsk, Belarus, Monday, Aug. 10, 2020. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, one of released Belarusian prisoners, smiles surrounded by his supporters as he arrives at the U.S. Embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis, File)

FILE - Relatives and friends of arrested participants of the flash mob "Revolution through a social network" wait outside the prison walls to bring food and clothes near a detention centre in Minsk, Belarus, Thursday, July 7, 2011. (AP Photo, File)

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Former Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman, who was convicted of lying during testimony at the O.J. Simpson murder trial, has died. He was 74.

Fuhrman was one of the first two police detectives sent to investigate the 1994 killings of Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman, in Los Angeles. He reported finding a bloody glove at Simpson’s home but his credibility came under attack during the trial as the defense raised the prospect of racial bias.

Under cross-examination, Fuhrman testified that he had never made anti-Black racial slurs in the past decade, but a recording showed he had done so repeatedly.

Lynn Acebedo, the chief deputy coroner in Kootenai County, Idaho, said that Fuhrman died May 12. The county does not release the cause of death as a rule.

Alan Dershowitz, a prominent lawyer and law professor who was a legal strategist on Simpson’s defense “Dream Team,” said Fuhrman was a “much better detective than he was a witness.”

“He’s very smart, and you know, a very, very aggressive detective. Ultimately his actions helped us win the O.J. case because of his use of the ‘n’ word,” Dershowitz said Monday evening. “I got to know him later, after it was all over, and we had a cordial relationship.”

Fuhrman retired from the Los Angeles Police Department after Simpson’s 1995 acquittal. He subsequently moved to Idaho with his family and set up a 20-acre (eight-hectare) farm, raising chickens, goats, sheep and llamas.

In 1996, Fuhrman was charged with perjury and pleaded no contest. He later became a TV and radio commentator and wrote the book “Murder in Brentwood” about the killings.

A criminal-court jury found Simpson, a former star NFL running back and actor, not guilty of murder in 1995, but a separate civil trial jury found him liable in 1997 for the deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million to relatives of Brown and Goldman. He served nine years in prison on unrelated charges and died in Las Vegas of prostate cancer in 2024 at the age of 76.

Kato Kaitlin, a friend of Brown who also testified in the murder trial, wrote in a post on X that he wanted to respectfully acknowledge Fuhrman's death and that he hopes Fuhrman's loved ones can find peace.

“While we were never close personally, our lives were indelibly linked through our roles in the O.J. Simpson trial over thirty years ago. It was a deeply complex and painful chapter for everyone involved, but any loss of life is a time for reflection and solemnity,” Kaitlin wrote.

Fuhrman’s father left when he was 7 years old, and Fuhrman often cared for his younger brother while his mother worked. As an adult, he joined the Marines and then the Los Angeles Police Department.

Golden reported from Seattle.

FILE - In this June 15, 1995 file photo, O.J. Simpson, left, grimaces as he tries on one of the leather gloves prosecutors say he wore the night his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were murdered in a Los Angeles courtroom. (AP Photo/Sam Mircovich, Pool, File)

FILE - Los Angeles Police Department Det. Mark Fuhrman, foreground, and Superior Court Judge Lance Ito, rear, crane their heads to look at an overhead monitor during the O.J. Simpson double-murder trial, Friday, March 10, 1995, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)

FILE - Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman shows the jury in the O.J. Simpson double murder trial evidence during testimony Friday, March 10, 1995, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, Pool, File)