After the police received information that he could pose or does pose a threat to national security, Burda told BNS he had lost his permit to possess a gas pistol and failed to obtain a permit to purchase a Category C firearm.
Burda is now suing the SSD. Last year, the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court rejected the lawyer's appeal as unfounded, but the ruling has not yet entered into force as Burda appealed with a court of higher instance.
According to the court documents, the SSD informed the Police Department in March, 2022 in writing that Burda was cooperating with the Kremlin-controlled media.
"By giving interviews to these media outlets, Burda is trying to provide legal justification for the historical narratives used by Russia against Lithuania regarding Lithuania's occupation in 1940 and Lithuania's legal status after the proclamation of the Act of Restoration of Lithuania's Independence March 11, 1990, the actions of the Soviet army and OMON during the events of January 1991, as well as the application of criminal laws in the January 13 case," the SSD document reads.
After analyzing information, the SSD found that Burda's activities may pose a threat to national security. It also states that the provided information is backed by the SSD's classified information.
Burda considers the SSD and other institutions' actions to be an attack.
"It turns out that I am a victim of the January 13 trial and have been recognized as a security threat. Because I defended, and, as it turns out, too actively defended the convicted tank driver, Yuri Mel. That's our state's response to the lawyers," Burda told BNS.
In his words, the situation was abnormal, and one could hardly imagine getting such wording for expressing the defense's opinion in public about the defendant's attitude to the January 13 case.
Besides Mel, Burda also defended former KGB officer Mikhail Golovatov in the January 13 case. Last year, the Supreme Court of Lithuania reduced Mel's prison sentence from ten to nine years, which Burda viewed as a victory.
Speaking with BNS, Mindaugas Kukaitis, chairman of the Lithuanian Bar Association, said he was not aware of the SSD's information on Burda.
"All I know is that his firearm permit was revoked. We have not received a SSD document on him being considered a threat to national security. If we received such a document, we would have to assess it, of course," Kukaitis told BNS.