Belarusian political prisoner Autukhovich denied necessary treatment

Entrepreneur from Vaukavysk Mikalai Autukhovich, kept in a detention facility in Minsk, is denied the necessary medical treatment.

Uladzimir Asipenka is also in the same facility. Lawyer Paval Sapelka worries about the fact that Mikalai Autukhovich hasn’t handled his problems with health a month after the verdict was announced.

“He cannot receive dental care. He asks to transfer him to a medical unit because he began to feel worse but he got a refusal. His hand cannot move properly. We think we will have to apply to international organizations for help Autukhovich to restore his right, as our correction institutions are not able to do their work,” Pavel Sapelka told Radio Svaboda.

Mikalai Autukhovich got back some of the things he had been seized after his arrest on February 8, 2009. He received a laptop, a video camera, a toy yacht, which he planned to use as a bomb in a terrorist attack, as supposed by investigators. Autukhovich repeatedly said the version about using a toy yacht as a bomb was silly. The Supreme Court dismissed the version, but sentenced Mikalai Autukhovich to five years and 2 months of imprisonment for illegal actions with weapons.

Uladzimir Asipenka was sentenced to three years of imprisonment and placed to a detention facility in Minsk. His daughter Lyudmila Asipenka hasn’t received letters from him for a week.

“This worries me, maybe he has been transferred somewhere. I don’t know why he doesn’t write. In any case, I sent letters to him, if he had been transferred, I would have received my letters back. The latest letter from him was last Saturday, he wrote he was all right.”