Group of observers leaves Moldova after police detain their leaders

ENEMO Mission (European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations) decided to leave Moldova after the organization’s president and vice president were detained by the police at a camp in Vadul lui Voda town last night, sources in the National Democratic Institute’s Office in Moldova have told Info-Prim Neo. The Mission’s head Serghei Tkacenko was released on Tuesday at about 15.00. His deputy Edil Baisaev was also set free and presumably already left Moldova. Alexandru Postică, jurist at Promo-LEX Association, said that Edil Baisaev was looked for at all the police commissariats in Chisinau, but unsuccessfully. “Today, at about 11.00, an employee of the Field Services Department of the Ministry of the Interior went to the camp in Vadul lui Voda and asked that he was given Baisaev’s personal belongings so that he could transmit them,” the jurist said. The jurists also said that officials of the Field Services Department told him that Edil Baisaev has left the country. “I asked for the registration of the detention, but it could not be found at the office. We suppose that Baisaev went home. We are waiting for a phone call,” Postica said. According to the jurist, when detained the two men were threatened and intimidated into leaving Moldova during 24 hours. The Central Election Commission (CEC) did not accredit more than a half of the ENEMO observers, invoking that they have a criminal record. ENEMO has been in Moldova since the start of the campaign for the July 29 legislative elections. The Mission was invited to monitor the electoral process by the CEC. The ENEMO delegation in Moldova was composed of 6 long-term observers and over 100 short-term observers from 12 CIS and Central-Eastern European countries (Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Montenegro, Albania, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Croatia, Kyrgyzstan, and Macedonia). ENEMO consists of 18 nongovernmental election monitoring organizations from Central-Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia. Earlier, the Moldovan police detained a group of observers from Georgia. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia said it was bewildered by this incident.