The issue of political prisoner Mikalai Statkevich may be solved in the near future

05.08.2015 | Politics

Belarusian president Aliaksandr Lukashenka stated that at yesterday’s meeting with independent journalists.

According to Lukashenka, the political prisoner and a former presidential candidate is in prison just because of his pride:

"I will not play cat and mouse - the issue is on the agenda. And I am the only person who can solve it. But I do not know yet when it will happen. I have not considered the issue in such perspective. If we release him, he should be released before the election. In the near future you will know about it," – Belsat quotes Lukashenka.

"He wants to be in prison and leave it as a hero. I give him such opportunity, and you ask me to free him. What am I supposed to do? I can release, if a person files a petition [for pardon] to me, but he fails to ask, because he wants to be a hero."

As “EuroBelarus” Information Service earlier reported, Mikalai Statkevich is the last 2010 presidential candidate whom the Belarusian regime is still keeping in prison. The sentence given to Statkevich in 2011 was one of the toughest: six years of imprisonment in a maximum-security penal colony. The authorities are trying to embitter Statkevich’s life even in prison putting him to a disciplinary cell or making him share a ward with an AIDS sufferer. However, the former presidential candidate keeps maintaining his innocence and refuses to ask Belarus president Lukashenka for pardon.

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The issue of political prisoner Mikalai Statkevich may be solved in the near future

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