English

Sannikaw explains decision to ask for Lukashenka's pardon

Former presidential candidate Andrey Sannikaw revealed on Tuesday that he had applied for a presidential pardon in an effort to "stop provocations" and even avoid possible death, BelaPAN said.

The 58-year-old opposition politician, who was released from prison on April 14 after being pardoned by Alyaksandr Lukashenka, would not go into detail as to what kind of pressure he had experienced behind the bars. "I wrote an application for a pardon. I wrote that I was asking [Mr. Lukashenka] to display humanity. I did it consciously. I don't want to comment any further," he said.

"It seemed to me that fairly serious troubles, even death could befall me," Mr. Sannikaw said.

The former deputy foreign minister said that he had written his pardon application twice, on November 20, 2011 and after Mr. Lukashenka's news conference more than a month later. At the news conference, which Mr. Sannikaw heard over the radio, Mr. Lukashenka denied having received any requests for a pardon from his imprisoned political opponents.

Mr. Sannikaw said that the conditions of his imprisonment had improved only after he had written the second application for a pardon.

On May 14, 2011, a district judge in Minsk sentenced Mr. Sannikaw to five years in prison, finding him guilty of "organizing mass disorder" in connection with the post-election street 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.

On September 20, Mr. Sannikaw was transferred from a prison in Navapolatsk to Correctional Institution No. 2 in Babruysk. He was removed from the prison in mid-November, held for a few days in Correctional Institution No. 4 in Mahilyow and then brought to the Vitsba 3 facility.

The administration of Vitsba 3 held Mr. Sannikaw incommunicado for more than two months, using various pretexts to deny the inmate his constitutional right to receive legal aid. It claimed that Mr. Sannikaw did not need any legal counsel, and that he feared for his life and health and should therefore be kept away from outsiders.