Ex-residential candidate Mikalai Statkevich has to share a ward with a former death squad soldier, non-governmental organization “Platform” reports.
Officials of the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs refused to comment on the information about Statkevich’s new cellmate.
According to “Platform”, Andrey Vasilieu, ex-deputy commander for physical training of MIA military unit №3214 , was moved from Novopolotsk penal colony №10 to Mahiliou prison №4 and put in the ward where Mikalai Statkevich is kept. In 2002 the Belarusian military court sentenced Vasilieu to 21 years of imprisonment for homicide.
Reffering to the data given by Russian television company NTV, “Platform”stresses that Andrey Vasilieu never concealed his personal participation in kidnapping and assasinating opposition leaders Yury Zakharanka, Viktar Hanchar, Anatol Krasouski and journalist Dzmitry Zavadski in 1999-2000. However, Vasilieu denied any involvement in death squads’ activity on the airwaves of ONT, a Belarusian state-owned television channel.
Ex-presidential candidate, leader of the Belarusian Social-Democratic Party (Hramada), Mikalai Statkevich was adjudged guilty of mass riot organization on December, 19, 2010. On May 26, 2012 the court sentenced him to six-year imprisonment in a maximum security penal colony. According to his wife Maryna Adamovich, the political prisoner is not going to file a petition for pardon addressed to president Aliaksandr Lukashenka.
Belsat
