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Imprisoned opposition activist Dzmitry Bandarenka transferred back to medical facility

Imprisoned opposition politician Dzmitry Bandarenka has been transferred back to the medical facility of Correctional Institution No. 15 in Mahilyow, his wife, Volha, told BelaPAN on Thursday.

He was moved there as far back as November 1, she said. “A doctor phoned me to say that he would take a rest at the facility and then be transferred back to his regular unit.”

The 48-year-old activist of an opposition group called European Belarus needs medical care after undergoing back surgery in July. His lawyer Yury Stashkevich told reporters on October 25 that the politician’s health condition had deteriorated and he had to use a crutch for walking.

Mrs. Bandarenka expressed fears that the authorities were just trying to mount pressure on her husband by transferring him from the medical facility to the unit and back to force him to apply to Alyaksandr Lukashenka for a pardon.

She said that she received an unscheduled phone call from her husband on November 7. “I was on my way to Vilnius,” she said. “The reception was poor. As soon as I told him that an inmate with TB had been placed in Andrey Sannikaw’s cell, his phone went debt. He, however, called me back, but our conversation was short.”

On April 27, a district judge in Minsk sentenced Mr. Bandarenka, a campaign aide to presidential candidate Andrey Sannikaw in last December`s presidential election, to two years in a low-security prison, finding him guilty of organizing disturbances and participating in them in connection with the street protest staged on December 19, 2010.