Mikalai Statkevich looks from behind his barred cage during a court session in Minsk, Belarus, 26 May 2011. Photo: EPA/TATYANA ZENKOVICH
Former Belarusian presidential candidate Mikalai Statkevich has been released from prison and is now at home in the capital, Minsk, independent Belarusian newspaper Nasha Niva reported on Thursday.
Nasha Niva said Statkevich had managed to secure his release from prison without being deported from Belarus, as had happened to other political prisoners, adding that Statkevich had also suffered a stroke, but was now at home recovering.
Statkevich, who stood against Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko in the presidential election in 2010, caused headlines in September when he refused to leave the country after he was released from prison with a group of other political prisoners following a meeting between Lukashenko and US President Donald Trump’s representative John Cole, at which the US agreed to lift sanctions on Belavia, the national airline of Belarus, and to reopen its embassy in Minsk.
Pictures emerged of Statkevich sitting alone on the Belarusian side of the border with Lithuania, refusing to go into exile. He was eventually picked up by Belarusian border guards and returned to custody.
Statkevich was first sentenced to prison in 2004, after leading protests against a rigged referendum, in which the constitutionally mandated two-term limit as president was scrapped. Statkevich was then convicted in 2010 of “orchestrating mass disorder”, having stood against Lukashenko in that year’s presidential election, and this time sentenced to five years in prison. Though he was released in 2015, his criminal record barred him from standing for president again.
In 2021, Statkevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison for organising “mass riots” for his role in the massive anti-government protests that convulsed the country following Lukashenko’s fraudulent re-election in 2020. He was tried alongside Siarhei Tsikhanouski, one of Belarus’s most prominent opposition politicians, and blogger Ihar Losik, who ran the independent Telegram channel Belarus of the Brain, both of whom were released and deported to Lithuania in September.
