Another person charged over December 2010 post-election riot

Uladzimir Kondrus, a resident of the town of Rudziensk, Minsk region, is held in custody at jail No. 1 in Minsk, according to information received by the Human Rights Center "Viasna".

Independent journalists identified him in the photographs from this year’s Freedom Day rally in Minsk and comparing to the photos, in which he looks like an active participant in the tragic events at the House of the Government on 19 December 2010, argued that he could play the role of a provocateur.

Human rights defenders also learned that Uladzimir Kondrus, born in 1977, was taken into custody on June 14 in the framework of a preliminary investigation for his alleged involvement in the riots outside the Government House during the presidential elections in 2010. He has reportedly declared a hunger strike to protest the detention. For this reason, his health deteriorated, and he was transferred to the jail’s medical unit.

Human rights activists believe that Kondrus is charged under Art. 293 of the Criminal Code (“rioting”). 49 people were convicted under this article in 2011, many of them were imprisoned for various terms.

All the convicts were eventually amnestied or pardoned by the President and released from prison. To date, human rights defenders know about only one person involved in the case, former presidential candidate Ales Mikhalevich, whose case has been recently suspended.