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Sannikaw staying in Mahilyow prison

Andrey Sannikaw is staying in Correctional Institution No. 4 in Mahilyow, the former presidential candidate's lawyer, Maryna Kavalewskaya, told reporters in the city in eastern Belarus on Thursday, BelaPAN said.

The head of the prison administration rejected the lawyer's request for a meeting with the client, explaining that Mr. Sannikaw was being transferred through the correctional facility to a prison in the Vitsyebsk region.

Ms. Kavalewskaya said that she would complain to the Mahilyow regional prosecutor about the meeting denial.

The lawyer planned to visit Mr. Sannikaw in a correctional institution in Babruysk on Wednesday but was told that the opposition politician had been removed from the prison.

Later in the day, Syarhey Pratsenka, acting head of the ministry's Corrections Department, said that Mr. Sannikaw was being moved to a prison in the Vitsyebsk region.

On May 14, a district judge in Minsk sentenced the 57-year-old Sannikaw to five years in prison, finding him guilty of "organizing mass disorder" in connection with a post-election protest staged in the Belarusian capital city on the night of December 19, 2010.

Mr. Sannikaw, a former deputy foreign minister, was severely beaten during riot police's violent crackdown on the crowd in front of the House of Government and was arrested shortly afterward.

On July 15, a three-judge panel of the Minsk City Court upheld his prison sentence.

The politician was initially sent to serve his sentence in a correctional institution in Navapolatsk but was transferred to the Babruysk facility on September 20.

According to the central election commission, Mr. Sannikaw was the runner-up in the December 14-19 election with 2.43 percent of the vote.