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Mikalay Dzyadok to be transferred to cell-type prison

A judge decided on December 4 that Mikalay Dzyadok, a young opposition activist convicted in a so-called anarchists' case, should serve the rest of his prison term in a cell-type correctional institution, BelaPAN said.

In a trial that took place in Correctional Institution No. 17 in Shklow, Mahilyow region, behind closed doors, the judge found Mikalay guilty of persistent violation of prison rules and ordered his transfer to a high-security prison, his father told BelaPAN. "This is all the lawyer told me," he said. "I don't have any other information about the trial."

A human rights organization called Vyasna (Spring) earlier reported that the 24-year-old Dzyadok would probably be moved to Prison No. 4 in Mahilyow.

In a letter to his friend, Alyaksandr Yarashevich, that arrived at the end of November, Mr. Dzyadok wrote that a special commission had considered his case and concluded that he had not "stepped on the path of reformation," continued to be a "pernicious influence" on other inmates and should be sent to a tougher prison.

According to Mr. Dzyadok, he has already received 22 reprimands from the prison administration and spent 20 days in a disciplinary cell.

Earlier this year, former presidential candidate Mikalay Statkevich, opposition politician Zmitser Dashkevich and businessman Mikalay Awtukhovich, who are widely viewed as political prisoners, were also transferred to cell-type correctional institutions in punishment for alleged violations of prison rules.

In May 2011, a district judge in Minsk imposed prison sentences on Mikalay Dzyadok, a student of European Humanities University in Vilnius, and his co-defendants Ihar Alinevich and Alyaksandr Frantskevich, finding them guilty of a series of Molotov cocktail attacks on various establishments, including the Russian embassy, in 2009 and 2010.

Mr. Alinevich was sentenced to eight years, Mr. Dzyadok to four years and six months, and Mr. Frantskevich to three years in a medium-security correctional institution.

Mr. Dzyadok was arrested in September 2010 and charged over a Molotov cocktail attack on the Belarusian Armed Forces' General Staff compound in Minsk in September 2009.

Mr. Dzyadok also stood accused of throwing fireworks into the House of Trade Unions in Minsk in August 2010 and at Shangri La Casino in Minsk in May 2010.

Belarusian opposition politicians and human rights defenders have included Messrs. Dzyadok, Alinevich and Frantskevich are on the list of 13 "political prisoners" whose release was demanded by the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in a July 2012 resolution.