Mikalai Statkevich’s wife received first letter from Mahilyou prison

Maryna Adamovich, the wife of the political prisoner and a former candidate for presidency, has received the first letter from Mahilyou prison №4.

Mikalai Statkevich was transferred to the capital of the region from Shklou penal colony by a decision of the court, which on May 4 changed the pattern of detention to a harsher one. The politician was in Mahilyou prison before, from 2012 to 2015. Maryna Adamovich noted that the letter had become the first message from her husband. She has not received a message from the prison administration that he had been transferred here, Radio Racyja informs.

- He had written on May 6, – Maryna Adamovich said. – He wrote about transfer. As far as I know, it was on May 5. It usually happens at night. He was placed to his old cell. He writes:

“The pressure on me was so obvious and ostentatious, that some my fellow prisoners said that serial killers are treated better.”

The cell in which the political prisoner is placed is a solitary cell. Mikalai Statkevich filed an application to be held there.

- I do not want to sit with the neighbours which had been selected for me, and to control their behaviour all the time. It’s a high security, so not many things I had brought from the colony were allowed to be brought in, – Mikalai Statkevich writes in a letter to his wife.

Mikalai Statkevich is the only presidential candidate in Belarus in the election-2010 who is still imprisoned. On May 2011 he was sentenced to 6 years of deprivation of freedom on charges relating mass riots on the polling day. International human rights organisations recognized Statkevich a political prisoner.

Initially the convicted politician served a sentence in the colony №17 in Shklou, however in January 2012 conditions were harshened for him, and he was transferred to Mahilyou prison №4 for 3 years. After this term, on January 12, 2015, Statkevich was returned to Shklou penal colony, where in the first two days two reports were drawn up against him for violation of internal rules.