On Sunday, Mikita Zalatarou, a 17-year-old political prisoner and a patient with epilepsy, phoned his father from behind bars and said that he had been given another 6 days in a disciplinary cell after spending there a week.
“As far as I understood, he was deprived of a meeting with relatives. He asked us to hand over a parcel to him, now we are packing it,” the human rights centre Viasna quotes the father with reference to BelaPAN.
On October 2, Mikita’s mother who came to the Babruysk penal colony was not allowed to see him; the prison authorities refused to accept a food parcel for the jailed minor as well.
In late February, Mikita Zalatarou (he was 16 at that moment) was sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment in a correctional colony for ‘violence against an internal affairs officer’, ‘illegal actions with flammable substances’, and ‘organising mass riots’. The teenager was detained on August 11, 2020; in accordance with the investigators’ version, he threw Molotov cocktails at the military. Mikita pleaded not guilty.
Mikita Zalatarou suffers from epilepsy. The young man and his father say that Mikita was beaten in the both police station and pre-trial detention centre in August and late December. In turn, the officials claimed the internal check showed no elements of the violence against the arrestee. The prison authorities also refused to provide him with anti-epileptic drugs, Mikita said.
In the summer of 2021, Mikita Zalatarou was accused of using violence against an officer of the pre-trial detention centre and threatening another employee and her family. In mid July, a Homiel court sentenced him to another 1.5 years of imprisonment. The defendant admitted his guilt, but according to him, ‘it was not violence, but resistance’; he claims that he voiced threats in a state of emotional conflict, with no intention to carry them out.
The Belarusian human rights authorities recognised Mikita Zalatarou as a political prisoner; Amnesty International called on the Belarusian authorities to immediately release the young man.
belsat.eu
