Imprisoned ex-presidential candidate ‘inclined to violence and escape’

‘I forgot to tell you that I am still regarded as 'a person inclined to violence and escape'.Thus, they should talk on discipline with me monthly,’ political prisoner Mikalai Statkevich wrote to his wife, statkevich.org reports.

‘Soon after Mikalai's transfer from a penal colony to a prison in January 2012 in became known that he was classified as a gross violator of prison regulations, 'who has no intentions to mend his ways and plans not to give up his criminal pursuits after the release', which gave the ground for stricter confinement conditions. The fact that he was given the status of an inmate 'inclined to violence and escape' brings more restrictions to the prisoner because he is put under additional supervision.

Two years passed and I have recently asked myself whether the additional restrictions were removed. Some days later I received the answer which was quoted above and the information about him being talked to every month. All these measures allow prison officers to impose additional control measures in the cell, through the viewing window in the door and by other means. He jokes he 'promises not to attack anyone here'. That's the news from him that doesn't seem to be new,’ Maryna Adamovich, the political prisoner's wife, said.

Mikalai Statkevich is the last 2010 presidential candidate to be in prison. The sentence given to Mr Statkevich in 2011 was one of the toughest: six years of imprisonment in a maximum security penal colony. The reason might be explained by the fact that in his election speech Mikalai Statkevich addressed to the current president demanding “to give back all that you have stolen”. The authorities are trying to embitter Statkevich’s life even in prison putting him to a disciplinary cell or making him share a ward with an AIDS sufferer. However, the former presidential candidate keeps mantaining his innocence and refuses to ask President Lukashenka for pardon.