Disabled Convict Driven To Death In Zhodzina Prison

Aleh Bahdanau died in the Zhodzina prison in January 2016 because he hadn’t been rendered medical assistance.

However, the Investigatory Committee found no corpus delicti in the actions of the prison staff, and found no answer to the question why the inmate had died either. The prisoner’s mother thinks such decision is nothing but a “scorn”, Belsat TV reports.

Maryna Bahdanava has demanded the Investigatory Committee should start a criminal case over her son’t death for 8 months. The Belarusian law-enforcement agencies found no corpus delicti in the death in prison, and terminated the preliminary investigation.

“This was a group torture against my son. They didn’t render him medical assistance, while he should have been in hospital. He had a prosthetic heart, he had undergone a complicated surgery and they held him in the cells with 20 cellmates, where everyone smoked,” — Aleh’s mother Maryna Bahdanava says.

The higgledy-piggledy revivification on the plank-boards

Maryna Bahdanava, together with the human rights center "Viasna", published a video from the surveillance camera, which shows the last minutes of Aleh Bahdanau’s life. The prison inspectors brought the inmate to the basement, already in an unconscious state, and tried to revive him for half an hour. Only after that, medical workers appeared and tried to save the prisoner for another five minutes.

"The Investigatory Committee should have initiated a criminal case for failure to provide medical assistance," — head of the human rights organization "Platforma" Andrei Bandarenka said. — “For whatever reasons — non-existent opportunity, existing opportunity — it does not matter. The main thing is that this assistance was provided not in a timely manner and not by the medical staff of the institution."

Moreover, violations could have been committed not only at this stage. In his letters, Aleh Bahdanau repeatedly wrote about the unbearable conditions in prison and about the lack of medical care.

"We urgently need ointment for bruises and hematomas, they took blood samples twice, but didn’t inform the results. They give no pills, no nothing, probably there are no doctors and no one treats anyone, " — Aleh’s mother is reading out his letter.

The last words are confirmed even by the check carried out by the Investigatory Committee, which recognized that the prisoners did not have dispensary observation charts because of "a large number of prisoners per doctor and the absence of a nurse".

"I felt sick, my hands and feet got numb, I went to the door, began to shout that I was ill," — he wrote in an explanatory note. "The guard opened, grinned and led me to the fish-tank ". My son was held there from 6 a.m. until 2 p.m. — a disabled person with a prosthetic heart, " — Maryna Bahdanava says.

However, as the beating and keeping in the punitive cell did not become the immediate cause of death, the Investigatory Committee decided that these facts do not apply to the case.

This is the fourth death of a prisoner in a Belarusian jail in the last few years. A year ago Ihar Barbashynski died (also in Zhodzina), three years ago - Ihar Ptsichkin and Artsiom Karpovich. The guilty was found only once. The paramedic of the remand prison #1 was accused of Ihar Ptsichkin’s death. The court sentenced him to 2 years and 10 months in prison.