General Prosecutor’s Office promises to look for Zeltser’s documents for amnesty
2- 23.06.2009, 12:31
The General Prosecutor’s Office of Belarus is going to clear up a situation with the documents necessary to include US national Emanuel Zeltser in the amnesty.
“We’ll find the reasons,” Ryhor Vasilevich, Prosecutor General of Belarus, told at a press conference in Minsk answering journalists why the Minsk City Court didn’t send documents on Zeltser’s sentence to the penal colony administration. The Prosecutor General said: “in my view, terms of documents delivery have come.”
It should be reminded that US national Emanuel Zeltser went on protest hunger strike on June 8. The American lawyer tries to draw attention to the fact the Minsk City Court drags on sending a notice necessary for the penal colony administration to include Zeltser in the amnesty.
On June 11, the lawyer sent a complaint to the Supreme Court and the General Prosecutor’s Office at actions of the Minsk City Court.
Zeltser may be included in the law amnesty, signed on May 5 by the president of Belarus. According to article 22 of the law, an organization has a right to inquire about the documents before considering a question on whether the amnesty can be applied. The documents requested must be sent immediately. But Mahilou penal colony #15, where Zeltser is serving, can’t receive the paper from the Minsk City Court for more than three weeks.
On August 11, 2008, the Minsk City Court sentenced Zeltser to three years of imprisonment. The American lawyer was found guilty of using fake documents and attempted industrial espionage. The trial was held behind closed doors. Due to bad condition, Zeltser has been in the medical unit since he arrived in the Mahilou penal colony.
