Political prisoner Rubtsou to be thrown to pre-trial detention centre

Activist Yury Rubtsou from Homel is accused of evasion of serving a term of punishment.

He will be transferred to a pre-trial detention centre in Baranavichy on the evening of April 13, BelaPAN reports.

Human rights defender Anastasia Loika said : “He is on the way from the pre-trial detention centre in Pruzhany to the centre in Baranavichy. He is expected to arrive there this evening.”

Yury Rubtsou was charged on April 9. The activist and his lawyer will begin to read the materials of the criminal case next week, according to Loika.

Rubtsou was taken from the open-type correctional facility in the village of Kuplin (the Pruzhany district, the Brest region) to the Pruzhany district department of the Investigation Committee on April 6. The activist was charged with evasion of serving a term of imprisonment (article 415 of the Criminal Code). Rubtsou declined the services of a state lawyer and went on hunger strike. He also refused to give evidence to investigator Volha Baradouskaya, who conducts his criminal case.

On 6 October 2014, Minsk's Tsentralny district court sentenced Rubtsou, 53, to 2.5 yaers in an open-type correctional facility. The term was reduced by one year due to the amnesty. Rubtsou was charged with insulting judge of the Savetski district court Kiryl Palulekh, who tried him after the Chernobyl Way rally on 28 April 2014 in Minsk (article 391 of the Criminal Code).