Belarusian opposition politician Nikolai Statkevich sent back to prison after refusing to leave country following release
Belarusian opposition figure and political prisoner Nikolai Statkevich has been sent back to the penal colony where he was previously held, after refusing to leave the country following his release last week, the independent outlet Nasha Niva reported.
Statkevich’s release was part of a deal between Minsk and Washington under which Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko agreed to free 52 political prisoners. While the majority were transferred to Lithuania, Statkevich refused to go into exile and remained in the neutral zone at the Belarusian-Lithuanian border. After several hours, Lithuania’s State Border Guard Service confirmed that he had re-entered Belarusian territory.
According to the office of Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, masked men later took Statkevich away to an unknown location. The 69-year-old reportedly told allies who urged him to go abroad that he would decide his own fate.
Statkevich first became active in the Belarusian opposition movement in the 1990s. He ran in the 2010 presidential election and afterward was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of organizing protests. He refused to ask for a pardon, but Lukashenko released him early in 2015. In May 2020, shortly before Belarus’s presidential election, Statkevich was arrested in Minsk. In December 2021, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison on charges of organizing “mass unrest.”
