Alena Autukhovich: «Prosecution of my husband and other businessmen was orchestrated beforehand”

March 8 has become symbolic for Alena Autukhovich in double measure. Marking the International Women’s Day, she also “marked” the tragic anniversary. March 8 marks one month after secret services arrested her husband Mikalay Autukhovich.

So March 8 was very bitter for wives of businessmen from Vaukavysk, “Belorusskij partisan” writes.

- Alena, do you still have hope that the story would end well after a month after your husband’s arrest?

- What are you speaking about? What hope there could be? When the minister once again spoke about charges (in fact, he read out the same text which was in the files of the case from the beginning), and it was then when I understood it was the end… No hope, no break in the clouds. This case had been pre-orchestrated in advance to present my husband and other businessmen as terrorists, so that no other state could defend businessmen from Vaukavysk.

- And what was with your applications for defending Mikalay yourself?

- Nothing. Investigators dismissed my requests to act as a defense at once. The investigator explained that in the following way: this issue is to be decided by the court and on application of the accused person. I lodged a complaint to the prosecutor of Hrodna region, but there is no answer.

- Have you been allowed to meet with your husband?

- Certainly not. They are far from giving a meeting to us. They can promise much, but do not allow us to meet. After the arrest they didn’t allow to bring him warm clothes and food. They said there’ll be a little check, and he would be released. They can say lots of things…

- How do you feel yourself in Vaukavysk, and what people are saying?

- Knowledgeable people understand what it means. Old people cannot be explained anything. They are used to think that everything said by the authorities is sacred. Right after the arrest the regime influenced the public society. They held meetings at enterprises and openly said that Autukhovich, Lyavonau and Asipenka are almost the same as terrorists. They said explosives had been seized from them…

I do not have a job or anything. We rent out a room and live from that…

Three activists of the movement of small businessmen from Vaukavysk Mikalay Autukhovich, Yury Lyavonau, and Uladzimir Asipenka were detained on February 8, 2009 after searches held by policemen. Usual soldering tools were found then.

On February 18, they were accused of arson of a house of former head of the Vaukavysk police department. It is remarkable that the arson took place in 2005, and the guilty persons are serving punishment. The arrested businessmen face up to 12 years of imprisonment.

On Sunday February 15, Yury Lyavonau was taken to Republican Prison Hospital in Kalvaryiskaya Street 36, with a diagnosis “stones in kidneys”.

From the moment of arrest their close relatives hadn’t seen them. The investigator of the “case” many times dismissed appeals of wives and children who requested a meeting wit the arrested entrepreneurs held in Minsk remand prison. As lawyers have promised not to reveal details of the case, relatives of Mikalay Autukhovich, Yury Lyavonau and Uladzimir Asipenka are in fact deprived of any information about them. Besides, the relatives have been denied a possibility to act as their defending lawyers.

It should be reminded that Yury Lyavonau and Mikalay Autukhovich are former political prisoners, sentenced to imprisonment on a far-fetched accusation for protection of the rights of entrepreneurs. In the beginning of 2008, a measure of punishment was changed for them to restriction of liberty. On February 10, 2009 a hearing on early conditional release of Mikalay Autukhovich was to take place in Vaukavysk.

Independent human rights activists recognize them as political prisoners, turning attention to the fact that Autukhovich and Lyavonau had previous conviction and had been found prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International earlier.