Mother not allowed to meet with Andrei Haidukou before trial

The 23-year-old resident of Navapolatsk is charged with "treason by the intelligence activities." On The closed court hearings on his case will started on 12 June. The mother of the arrested is sure of his innocence and laments the fact she hasn't received any latters from him for more than a week. Her request for a meeting with him wasn't granted.

It was her third attempt to meet with him during the 7-month investigation. This time, she received a refusal from the Vitsebsk Regional Court.

"I wasn't allowed to meet with him again and again receive no letters. As I found from the counsel, Andrei has been kept in the remand prison in Vitsebsk since 3 June and was ill. He asked me to give pass him mints from the throat, but they are not accepted in jail as the prison medic is allegedly out of office. It is very troubling that the letters aren't passed again. Andrei wrote us almost everyday and we received the letters when he was in the Minsk remand prison, whereas in Vitsebsk everything is vice-verse: there were problems with correspondence when he was kept there before, and we also experience them now. It is possible that our letters don't reach him either," commented Volha Haidukova.

Andrei Haidukou was detained in Vitsebsk on 8 November 2012. Since then, he has been in custody mostly in the Minsk KGB remand prison, but at the end of 2012 it was transferred to the remand jail in Vitsebsk for about a month.

According to the official information of the KGB, he was detained "while making a cache with information that may be relevant to foreign intelligence services". A criminal case for "high treason" was brought against the detainee, who can be sentenced to 7-15 years in prison.

According to the Chairman of the KGB Valery Vakulchyk, the hearings on the case in the Vitsebsk regional court are likely to be closed. Human rights activists insist on the publicity of the trial, as well as Volha Haidukova. She does not believe that her son would engage in espionage. Relatives and friends also believe that the harassment by the KGB is an attempt to intimidate youth activists. It is known that Andrei Haidukou was repeatedly threatened with "trouble" by unknown "men in civilian clothes," very often – during election campaigns, when he worked in teams of independent candidates, and also during the "silent protests."

Volha Haidukova is concerned about the health of her son: she knows that at the end of last week he was ill. And if he does not get better in a few days, he will probably write a statement for the posponement of the trial to a later date.