Siarhei Kavalenka transferred to pre-trial prison #2 in Vitsebsk

According to his wife, Alena Kavalenka, the political prisoner has been transferred to Vitsebsk from the pre-trial prison in Valadarski Street in Minsk.

"I found about this possibility on 7 May, and today he is already there. The lawyer will try to meet with him today. I am anxious that he has been transferred to the place where he had kept the hunger-strike during the first time of imprisonment," said Alena Kavalenka.

Bear in mind that Kavalenka had been transferred from Vitsebsk prison (where he kept a hunger-strike of protest against the court verdict, by which he was sentenced to 25 months in prison) to the psychiatric hospital in Navinki (Minsk), allegedly for psychiatric expertise.

His psychical state was "examined" for over a month. In fact, during this term Mr. Kavalenka was subject to forced feeding in order to make him stop the hunger-strike, which he eventually did.

On 4 May the penal department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs informed the prisoner's mother that he was found psychically sane.

Siarhei Kavalenka, an activist of the Conservative-Christian Party "Belarusian Popular Front", has been kept in custody since 19 December 2011. On 24 February the Pershamaiski District Court of Vitsebsk found him guilty of violating the regime of personal restraint (Article 415 of the Criminal Code) and sentenced him to 25 months in prison. Kavalenka had been senteced to three years of personal restraint for hanging out a white-red-white flag on the Main New Year Tree of Vitsebsk on 7 January 2010.