Foreign nationals detained at Baikonur spaceport

Foreigners's entry into the spaceport is deemed illegal

Three foreign nationals and a local man have been detained last Sunday for illegal entry into the restricted area of the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan, Utro.Ru reports. The four intruders were detained last Sunday by the police guards in the vicinity of launch pad No37 of the spaceport. Two of the detainees are reported to be from Afghanistan, one of them is a Pakistani, and another one is a Kazakh who is said to have been a guide to the foreigners.

All of the detained foreigners have visas for their stay in Kazakhstan. But their entry into the spaceport is deemed illegal because they never granted a special permit for entering the premises. After the preliminary questioning, the perpetrators were transferred to the Kazakh migration police.

However, according to RIA Novosti news agency, the Russian space agency Roskosmos denied the reports about the detention of foreigners last Sunday at the Baikonur.

“The reports that appeared in the media are obsolete and highly incorrect,” said Vyacheslav Davidenko, an official spokesman for Roskosmos. He admitted that two CIS citizens, one of them is an Uzbek, had been detained two weeks ago by guards patrolling one of the remote areas of the spaceport . They were detained while picking up non-ferrous materials for scrap and had no relation whatsoever to the regular operations of the facility.

Mr. Davidenko stressed the highest level of security maintained at all times within the spaceport, especially at the launch pad area and the infrastructure used for launching rockets. He claimed no incident involving an illegal entry into the launch complex has ever happened since the Baikonur facility was put into operation.