Imprisoned politician Dzmitry Bandarenka brought back to hospital in Minsk

Dzmitry Bandarenka was brought back to Minsk City Clinical Hospital No. 5 late on Monday for back surgery scheduled to be performed on July 26, the wife of the imprisoned opposition politician, Volha, told BelaPAN.

Mr. Bandarenka was to be admitted to the hospital earlier in the day. He was transferred there from the National Prison Hospital in the morning but driven by unidentified men in plain clothes away an hour later after a group of his associates gathered at the entrance to the institution to express support for him.

The wife said that doctors had almost completed paperwork needed for Mr. Bandarenka`s admission to the hospital when he was driven away.

According to unconfirmed reports, Mr. Bandarenka was taken to the interior ministry`s detention center on Valadarskaha Street.

Mr. Bandarenka`s right leg is partially paralyzed and he is said to be in constant pain because of four herniated interverbral discs and three trapped spinal nerves.

In a statement issued on July 24, the European Belarus group with which Mr. Bandarenka is affiliated said that it feared that the man would be denied a proper rehabilitation course. It said that Mr. Bandarenka had been in fact forced to give his written consent to the proposed treatment.

He was told that he had only two options: he would be either operated on or transferred to a prison to serve his sentence; a consultation with a non-staff neurologist was denied to him, the associates said.

On April 27, a district judge in Minsk sentenced Mr. Bandarenka, a former campaign aide to presidential candidate Andrey Sannikaw, to two years in a low-security prison, finding him guilty of organizing disturbances and participating in them in connection with a post-election protest staged in Minsk on December 19, 2010.

In late May, the wife said with reference to a neurologist who had examined Mr. Bandarenka that he might end up in a wheelchair unless he got back surgery.