New case opened against political prisoner Mikalai Dzyadok

Mikalai Dzyadok faces one more year in prison.

The political prisoner, who is kept in the “closed” Mahilyou prison, has read the materials of the criminal case related to his insubordination to the administration. Valeryja Khotsina, the wife of Mikalai Dzyadok, told about that, as Radio Svaboda.

”A lawyer visited Mikalai to take part in the investigative activities. That is, the investigation of the case has been already finished. They had been investigating it for at least two months. As a result, it turned out that investigators interrogated employees of the prison only: administration, supervisors, those who had been drawing up reports on his violations. But none of the witnesses, for example, his cell-mates, have been interrogated. However, he is charged with violations like allegedly quarreling with one of the cell-mates, but that person had not been even interrogated for some reason. Mikalai and his lawyer have spent just a several hours to read the case papers. Now it is to be forwarded to the prosecutor’s office, and then the trial will be scheduled within three weeks. I am to be informed 5 days earlier, and my lawyer too, as I hope. That’s how it should be, and I do not know how it will be in reality. As Zmitser Dashkevich, tried in prison, told, no one had been warned in advance,” she said.

If it were not for the approaching court, MIkalai Dzyadok could be expecting a release on March 3. Valeryja Khatsinina does not think that the authorities have started a new trial against her husband just to frighten him.

”They have a clear plan. They will stage a trial in the last days of the term, so it would not be taken in by the new term, and a real year will be left”, the wife of the political prisoner supposes.

We remind that Mikalai Dzyadok and Ihar Alinevich and Alyaksandr Frantskevich were sentenced to 3 years’ term by the court of Zavadski district of Minsk on May 27, 2011. They were charged under Article 339 Part 2 of the Criminal Code of Belarus (malicious hooliganism) and Article 218 Parts 2 and 3 (willful destruction or injuring of property). They were incriminated a number of buildings’ attacks and arsons, particularly the organization of unauthorized antimilitary action next to the Ministry of Defense in 2009, throwing Molotov cocktails at the Russian Embassy and the building of the detention centre in Akhrestsina Str. in Minsk in 2010.

Human rights activists treat imposed sentence to Dziadok and other imprisoned as politically motivated and also consider Mikalai Dziadok a political prisoner.