Jail officers accept medicines for environmental activist Novikava
Officers of the detention center on Akrestsina Street in Minsk accepted Thursday medicines for environmental activist Tatsyana Novikava, who had her thyroid gland removed.
The first attempt by Iryna Sukhi, leader of an NGO called Ecodom, to deliver the parcel failed as jail officers refused to accept it.
“I went to Tatsyana`s relatives to come back with her sister,” Ms. Sukhi told BelaPAN. “They accepted the medicines from her.”
Ms. Novikava’s lawyer plans to meet with her later in the day. “He visited the detention center in the morning, but jail officers did not allow him to meet with Novikava on the pretext that a doctor was doing his round in the detention center. They suggested that he should come after 2 p.m. So, he left.”
Ms. Novikava was arrested with Russian environmental activist Andrei Ozharovsky on Wednesday morning, an hour before they and Ms. Sukhi were to deliver a petition against the construction of a nuclear power plant in Belarus to the Russian embassy on the occasion of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Minsk.
Ms. Sukhi was arrested together with Legal Transformation Center activist, Mikhail Matskevich, later in the day. In their trials held in the Tsentralny District Court in Minsk, Ms. Sukhi was sentenced to a fine of 1,500,000 rubels ($180) and Mr. Matskevich was given a three-day jail sentence.
