English

Statkevich may be freed if he applies for pardon, Lukashenka says

Former presidential candidate Mikalay Statkevich may be released from prison if he applies for a pardon, Alyaksandr Lukashenka said Tuesday in reply to a question from BelaPAN Director General Ales Lipay during a meeting with Belarusian media leaders.

When asked by Mr. Lipay whether the 57-year-old Statkevich would be freed if he applied for a pardon, but his application did not contain an admission of guilt, Mr. Lukashenka said: “We may do this, but the procedure should be observed.”

“Statkevich is not a rival to me politically,” Mr. Lukashenka said. “Statkevich is politically dead for the Belarusians. During the last [presidential] election, he conducted a policy that was beneficial to the president…. For me, he was not a rival or a politician, and will not. Statkevich is not worth of being a stumbling block in our relations with the European Union.”

When reached by BelaPAN, while speaking about Andrey Sannikaw, another former presidential candidate who was arrested in a violent police crackdown on a post-election protest in Minsk on December 19, 2010, Mr. Lukashenka said that Mr. Sannikaw was pardoned and released because “he is wise and quirkier. He went there of his own free will and he is okay there. He stays in England and tries to do harm to us.”

Mr. Lukashenka pointed out that it was him, not Russia, who ordered the crackdown on the December 19, 2010 protest. “I was watching what was going on there through a monitor,” he said. “I told the police: ‘Just don’t touch them, don’t beat them.’”

When Mr. Lipay asked whether this meant that the police disobeyed him, Mr. Lukashenka said that it was good of the police to do so because protesters spat in the faces of police officers.

In May 2011, a district judge in Minsk sentenced Mr. Statkevich to six years in a medium-security prison, finding him guilty of organizing "mass disorder" in connection with the December 19, 2010 post-election protest.

In a trial that took place in a prison in Shklow, Mahilyow region, on January 12, 2012, a judge found Mr. Statkevich guilty of violating prison rules and ordered him placed in a higher-security correctional institution for three years.

The charge was brought against Mr. Statkevich because of his missing number tag and failure to mention handkerchiefs among his personal items.

Mr. Statkevich has repeatedly refused offers of freedom in exchange for applying to Mr. Lukashenka for a presidential pardon. While meeting with his wife, Maryna Adamovich, last July, Mr. Statkevich said that "even if the entire pro-democratic community asked him to do this, he would not listen.”

Ms. Adamovich told BelaPAN on Tuesday that her husband would not apply for a pardon in any case, even if he was not required to admit his guilt.