May 7 (Reuters) – British YouTube travel blogger Benjamin Rich, who specializes in remote and sometimes dangerous parts of the world, was arrested at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said on Saturday.
Dmitry Rogozin said in an online publication that Rich – whose Bald and Bankrupt channel has 3.53 million followers – and Alina Tselyupa were detained near one of the launch sites in Baikonur, which Russia is renting from Kazakhstan.
Local authorities are determining the couple’s “exact level of involvement in illegal activities”, said Rogozin, who published photos of Rich’s visa and Tselupa’s passport. Some of Rich’s videos feature a woman named Alina, but it is unclear if she and Celjupa are the same person.
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The latest video on Rich’s channel was shot in Syria and released on April 24. In an Instagram post last week, Rich said “Syrian tan and back to a country with Soviet mosaics”, but did not specify where it is.
In London, the British Foreign Office did not comment immediately.
Baikonur, once a closed Soviet city, is now open to tourists applying for permission from Roscosmos. It is located in the steppe about 1100 km (680 miles) southwest of the Kazakh capital Nur-Sultan.
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Report by David Ljunggren Edited by Matthew Lewis
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