Yauhen Basareuski: "Three years of harassment ruined my health"
Yauhen Basareuski, a member of the party "Fair World" from the town of Zhlobin, shared his thoughts on the non-guilty verdict that was handed down to him and his former colleague Valiantsina Kastsiukevich by the District Court on July 19.
- Yauhen, why were you, in your opinion, acquitted only three years after?
- I think they only now have time to bring the case to the end. After more than three years - this is too much even for the high-profile cases. The 2010 local elections, where I was running as a candidate, are already far away, but that does not mean that I will give up my work because I was scared. All this time I knew that neither I nor my colleague was guilty, we acted within the law, and that is why I felt more confident. Judge Alena Yarmolchyk conducted the trial very carefully, and in the last meeting I got the impression that she was increasingly winning over the position at the public prosecutor...
- But, in the first instance, Judge Ina Sharshniova of Zhlobin District Court sentenced you to three years...
- It just goes to show that the case was originally politically motivated, and that it was a real persecution. In the three years, I saw a lot of things, I ruined my eyesight, and now one of my eyes cannot see. Several times a year, I had to go to hospital to correct blood pressure. The doctors, by the way, offered to make a third group of disability for me. So much for my health and psychological state, even though I was not in jail but under house arrest. You know, at this age of mine, all of these interrogations and the courts do leave their mark.
- Will you, then, demand compensation?
- We will wait for the sentence to enter into force and we’ll think over the matter. Because even if we calculate how much money I lost on this epic, it turns out that without taking into account inflation and devaluation, I lost 14 million rubles.
- What's the first thing you plan to do now that you have become a free man?
- I plan to have a rest, and then I will visit my friends in Ukraine. Unfortunately, a very close friend of mine who lived in Tallinn, is dead, and I did not have time to part with him...
