Zmitser Dashkevich is to be kept in a punishment isolation cell of the penal colony of Hlybokaye for 10 days, his fiancee Nasta Palazhanka informed journalists.
According to her, Dashkevich told his defence lawyer about his repunishing during their meeting on February 22, 2012. As colony officials were keeping watch over them there was no scope for a confidential conversation. The political prisoner did not manage to give reasons for his putting in an isolation cell.
«Zmitser has no opportunity for reading the Bible,» Nasta Palazhanka says. In spite of his repeated demands the colony administration keeps ignoring them.
When the defence lawyer visited Dashkevich on February 17, 2012, the Young Front leader was being kept in a punishment isolation cell as well. He had been punished for the refusal to share a ward with a prisoner of low status (so called downcast). Under unofficial prison rules, a prisoner is considered a downcast if he stays in a ward with another downcast.
Zmitser Dashkevich and another activist of the Young Front Eduard Lobau were detained on December 18, 2010. Opposition activists and human rights defenders consider this detention as part of police preventive action performed before the 2010 presidential election. Dashkevich and Lobau were adjudged guilty of especially malignant hooliganism (Article 339, part 3 of the Criminal Code). On March 24, 2011 Zmitser Dashkevich was sentenced to two years of imprisonment in a general regime penal colony. In September, 2011 the activist was offered to file a petition for pardon addressed to Alexander Lukashenka but he rejected this proposal.
Belsat
