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| - Belarus tried to force opposition figure Maria Kolesnikova to leave the country but she tore up her passport to avoid expulsion, a colleague who was in a car with her on the border said on Tuesday. "She was pushed into the back seat (of the car), she yelled that she wasn't going anywhere," Anton Rodnenkov told a press conference in Kiev after he and another member of the opposition's Coordination Council crossed into Ukraine. "She tore up her passport," he said, then she left the car through a window and walked back to the Belarusian border. The other person in the car, the Council's executive secretary Ivan Kravtsov, told the press conference that he and Rodnenkov had been seized in Minsk as they were on their way to Kolesnikova's flat on Monday following reports of her abduction. Moved between various buildings with their hands tied and bags over their heads, the two men were interrogated, threatened with legal action and finally offered the chance to leave the country alongside Kolesnikova, he said. "What they were interested in was getting Maria Kolesnikova outside the country. They said this was necessary to de-escalate the situation in Belarus," where anti-government protesters have been taking to the streets for weeks, Kravtsov said. "I realised that they were trying to take her by force" to the Ukrainian border, he said. The three were eventually taken in a car to the buffer zone between the two countries' borders, where the two men passed into Ukraine while Kolesnikova refused and was detained. bur-pop/mm/jxb
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