Political prisoner Ihar Alinevich marks 31st birthday

It is the fourth birthday that Ihar Alinevich marks behind bars.

He serves his term in correctional facility Vitba 3 in the Vitebsk region.

Ihar Alinevich was born on September 24, 1983. He graduated from University of Informatics and Radioelectronics with major in electronics. He was involved in work over the Russian-Belarusian satellite. He took a break from university for a year to work on a cruise ship in the Caribbean Sea to see other countries and practice languages. He was interested in history and especially the anarchist movement. He read works and studied the biography of founders, theorists and prominent figures of the anarchist movement – Bakunin, Kropotkin, Nestor Makhno and others. Ihar's friends calls him an intellectual and a very interesting person. He said at the trial he didn't give up his views, the website palitviazni.info writes.

He was detained by plainclothes police officers on November 28, 2010, in Moscow and taken in an unknown direction. It became known the next day that he was thrown into the KGB jail in Minsk.

On May 27, 2011, Minsk's Zavadski court sentenced Ihar to 8 years in a medium security correctional facility. He was charged with violating part 2 of article 339 of the Criminal Code (hooliganism by a group of people) and parts 2 and 3 of articles 218 (damaging property by dangerous means on a large scale).

He was initially charged with malicious hooliganism (part 2 of article 339) over an attack on the Russian embassy on the night of August 30/31, 2010, and participating in a rally near the building of General Staff of the Belarusian Armed Forces on September 19, 2009. He was later charged with attacking the Shangri La casino, an office of Moscow-Minsk Bank on May 31, 2010, on the Russian embassy on August 30, 2010, and the detention centre on September 6, 2010.

Human rights organisations recorded a number of violations in the trial over Ihar Alinevich and other people in the case, so their conviction cannot be considered to be legal. The arrest of Ihar Alinevich in Moscow and the transfer to the KGB jail in Minsk violated the established procedures of the extradition of Belarusian citizens from Russia. He wasn't able to receive legal help and appeal against his arrest. Psychological pressure and torture were applied during the preliminary investigation. The principle of equality of arms was violated, the court often ignored grounded motions of the defendant, also those regarding the evidence of witnesses. It influenced the objectivity of the trial and marked the accusatory character of the trial as a whole.

Ihar and other political prisoners were tortured in the KGB jail. Before his transfer to another jail, Alinevich was offered to work for the government as a hacker, but he refused. Ihar's mother says he refused to work for the KGB three times and it was the real reason for the prosecution.

You can write to Ihar Alinevich at the following address:

211300, Vitebskaya obl, Vitebski r-n, Vitba, IK-3, otriad 2, Alinevich Ihar Uladzimiravich.