Volga Kazulina: «Father will never crawl to Lukashenka»

As Aliaksandar Lukashenka remarked in an interview to Spanish newspaper El Pais on November 26, he can consider pardoning Aliaksandar Kazulin if asked by the latter.

Daughter of the political prisoner Volga Kazulina said her father would never do that.

“The court passed a resolution. This is an independent branch of the state power. I respect the resolution. The only thing I can do is to pardon him. If the prisoner asks, I will consider his application and say afterwards whether I pardon him or not,” Lukashenka said in the interview.

“This will never happen. Father will never ask for pardon,” Volga claimed in an interview to Salidarnasts. “That’s what he thinks of that: he’s not guilty and hence he will not beg Lukashenka for anything. My father comprehends that he loses his chance for exoneration. Nevertheless, he refused to sign the papers that stated he had chosen the way of improvement in the colony, which deprived him of any chances for either amnesty or cutting the sentence. He announced his position once again at our recent meeting in prison.”

Nevertheless, in his interview Lukashenka claimed the former candidate for the presidential post to be imprisoned “for certain crimes.” “There are no political crimes in our Criminal Code. I don’t care who he is. He’s a citizen for me as well as for the court. And all citizens, including the president and certainly a candidate for presidency, must observe the law. And if someone organizes a gang and assaults a prison…” But even here, as Lukashenka believes, Kazulin’s sentence is much shorter than it was supposed to be. “If he hadn’t been a candidate for the presidential post, he would get 10-12 years instead of 5.5 for the explosion in a street. But being a former candidate he was treated with light pity.”

“Everybody knows my father was imprisoned illegally as he had committed no crime,” Volga Kazulina is convinced. “Now Lukashenka has a chance to restore justice and release my father. But Kazulin himself will never crawl to Lukashenka.”

At present the politician has submitted a claim against the sentence “for the absence of corpus delicti” to chairperson of the Supreme Court Valiantsin Sukala. The General Attorney didn’t consider a similar claim of Kazulin lodged in November.