Andrei Sannikau refutes MIA statement
On 30 January the lawyer was allowed to
hold a one-hour conversation with a presidential candidate Andrei Sannikau. “As
I have understood from the words of the lawyer, after my press-conference
attitude to Sannikau did not change for the better or for the worse,” said the
wife of the politician Iryna Khalip.
We remind that on 24 January Khalip was granted a meeting with her husband
after a 4-months’ pause. On the next day she called a press-conference, where
she informed that after tortures Sannikau had to write a petition for clemency
addressed to Lukashenka. As said by Khalip, the petition was signed on November
20, during Sannikau’s transition detention in Mahiliou prison. As on 23
December Lukashenka publicly stated that Sannikau had not addressed a petition
for clemency to him, Khalip fears that her husband would not be released from
the colony, and he goes in danger of his life.
“Andrei said that his situation remains
unchanged. He is very thankful to me for spreading information about him, as I
asked the lawyer to tell him about that. He also confirmed the date when the
petition was written – November 20, so they should not try to spread
speculations. I also asked the lawyer to tell about the person who had started
a hunger strike of protest, Andrei Mikalayeu, and Andrei asked to tell him to
stop the hunger strike. In such situation Mikalayeu and all of us should guard
our health for the sake of the future struggle,” Khalip said.
In connection with the events with Andrei Sannikau, and exactly the fact that
he had written a petition for clemency to Lukashenka on 20 November, and
tortures, threats and inhuman treatment, the Belarusian Helsinki Committee
addressed the Prosecutor General’s Office with a request to investigate the
facts voiced by Iryna Khalip at the extraordinary press-conference.
“We attach great significance to the facts of tortures,
that is why we ask the Prosecutor General’s Office to check all the facts
mentioned by Andrei Sannikov’s wife Iryna Khalip, and to respond to our
document in case some violations had really taken place. Now we are also
engaged in the case of Zmitser Bandarenka, a political prisoner, whose crutch
had been taken away, who is forced to work and placed in the conditions equal with
other prisoners, though he had undergone a surgery,” the lawyer of the BHC
Harry Pahaniaila said.
