Political prisoner Mikalai Autukhovich denied medical aid

Mikalai Autukhovich is denied the necessary medical treatment at the detention facility in Minsk where he is currently kept. Lawyer Pavel Sapelka worries about the fact that Mikalai Autukhovich hasn’t handled his problems with health a month after the verdict was announced.

‘He cannot receive dental care. He asks to transfer him to a medical unit because he began to feel worse but he got a refusal. His hand cannot move properly. We think we will have to apply to international organizations for help Autukhovich to restore his right, as our correction institutions are not able to do their work,’ Pavel Sapelka told RFE/RL.

Mikalai Autukhovich got back some of the things he had been seized after his arrest on 8 February 2009. He received a laptop, a video camera, a toy yacht which he planned to use as a bomb in a terrorist attack, as supposed by investigators. Autukhovich repeatedly said the version about using a toy yacht as a bomb was silly. The Supreme Court dismissed the version, but sentenced Mikalai Autukhovich to 5 years and 2 months of imprisonment for illegal actions with weapons.

Uladzimir Asipenka, another figurant of the criminal case, was sentenced to 3 years of imprisonment and placed to a detention facility in Minsk. His daughter Liudmila Asipenka hasn’t received letters from him for a week. ‘It worries me, maybe he has been transferred somewhere. I don’t know why he doesn’t write. In any case, I sent letters to him. If he had been transferred, I would have received my letters back. The latest letter from him was last Saturday – he wrote he was all right.’