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Opposition activist Dzyadok to stand trial in prison

Mikalay Dzyadok, who is widely viewed as a political prisoner, is expected to stand trial soon for allegedly violating prison rules.

In an interview with the Belarus service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Mr. Dzyadok’s wife, Valeryya Khotsina, said that the preliminary investigation against her husband had taken at least two months. Investigators interviewed prison officers but did not even talk to other witnesses, including prisoners, despite the fact that Mikalay is accused of maltreating one of his cellmates, Ms. Khotsina said.

The criminal case will now be sent to a prosecutor, and the date of the trial will be set within three weeks, she said.

If it was not for the new trial, Mr. Dzyadok would walk free on March 3 upon completion of his prison term.

Ms. Khotsina expressed confidence that her husband`s prison term would be extended. “They will hold the trial in the final days of his term to minimize its overlap with the new term and leave a full year,” she predicted.

In May 2011, a district judge in Minsk imposed prison sentences on Mikalay Dzyadok, a student of European Humanities University in Vilnius currently 26 years of age, 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.

In December 2012, a judge decided that Mr. Dzyadok should serve the rest of his prison term in a cell-type 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.

In December 2012, Mr. Dzyadok was transferred from a correctional institution in Shklow to Prison No. 4 in Mahilyow.

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.