Mikalai Dziadok's appeal to be considered on April 30

The appeal of political prisoner Mikalai Dziadok will be heard by the Mahilou regional court at 10:00 on April 30.

The news came from the political prisoner's father Aliaksandr Dziadok. Human rights defenders hope the trial will be open, the website statkevich.org reports.

Mikalai Dziadok prepared a special request, asking to take him to a court. He thinks he had the right to express his position. It is unknown if the request will be granted.

Mikalai Dziadok was to be released on March 3. The activist had served 4.5 years in prison allegedly for violence against official buildings. He pleaded not guilty and later refused to apply to Lukashenka for a pardon. Mikalai Dziadok spent half of his term in the closed prison as a persistent violate of prison rules.

On February 26, Mahilou's Leninski district court sentenced him to an additional year in a high security correctional facility for “failure to obey the prison administration” (article 411 of the Criminal Code). Belarusian human rights defenders struggle to cancel this article, which is a relict of the Soviet judicial system and doesn't have analogues in legislation of other post-Soviet countries.