Belarusian oppositionist gives up his freedom and returns to prison
15 September 13:50
Former Belarusian presidential candidate Nikolai Statkevich was jailed again after he refused to leave the country during the mass deportation of political prisoners. This was reported by Nasha Niva newspaper, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
the 69-year-old politician was among 52 political prisoners whom the Belarusian authorities decided to release on September 11 after negotiations with American diplomat John Cole, deputy special representative of the US President Keith Kellogg. All of the released prisoners were to be sent to Lithuania, but Statkevich categorically refused to leave his homeland.
According to sources, the ex-politician broke down the bus door and got out of the vehicle right in the neutral zone on the border between Belarus and Lithuania. After that, his whereabouts remained unknown.
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Now, according to media reports, Statkevich is being held in a colony in the town of Hlyboke in Vitebsk Oblast. This is the same institution where he served his sentence in recent years.
Who is Nikolai Statkevich?
Mikalai Statkevich participated in the 2010 presidential election, after which he was sentenced to 6 years in prison for participating in protests. After being released in 2015, he continued his political activities, but in May 2020 he was arrested again on the eve of mass protests. The court sentenced him to 14 years in prison for organizing mass disorder.
For the past two and a half years, the political prisoner has been held in isolation without the possibility of communication with the outside world. The conditions of his detention were particularly harsh: in five months of 2023, he was disciplined nine times, repeatedly sent to a punishment cell, and deprived of the right to receive visits and parcels.
In December 2023, the European Parliament adopted a special resolution demanding the immediate release of Statkevich and all 1500 political prisoners in Belarus. The parliamentarians noted that the health condition of the 2020 Sakharov Prize winner was deteriorating due to prolonged solitary confinement on politically motivated charges.
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