Emanuel Zeltser does not trust prison doctors
- 27.11.2008, 15:00
The US citizen accused for industrial espionage insists on examination by an independent doctor.
It has been told by E. Zeltser’s lawyer Zmitser Harachka to Interfax-Zapad agency.
“Today I visited my client in the correctional colony. He wants the doctor from the US who visited Minsk this summer to check him,” Z. Harachka said.
As said by him, “E. Zeltser is in a hospital at the territory of the colony. He was placed to the hospital; on the first day after transfer from Minsk,” the lawyer said. He noted that “beside the medicines given to him by the prison hospital, E. Zeltser takes medicines given to him by the US Embassy in Belarus”.
As it was informed earlier, this summer E. Zeltser was examined by Albert Benchabat, the US doctor, while Zeltser was kept in the remand prison of the KGB in Minsk. After examination the doctor said on air of the First channel of the Belarusian TV: “I read his medical record, examined him. He gets adequate treatment. Besides, I was given a right to study his medical history, so it was a complete medical examination like any doctor does”.
Previously there was information that E. Zeltser has diabetes, arthritis and a number of other health problems.
On August 11, 2008 Minsk city court recognized Emanuel Zeltser guilty of on charges of "attempted industrial espionage" and the use of fake documents and sentenced to 3 years of imprisonment. His secretary, Russian national Vladlena Funk, was sentenced to one year in prison on the same charges.
The pair were arrested upon their arrival in Minsk in March and put into the KGB detention center.
The Supreme Court of Belarus upheld this judgement on October 31.
E. Zeltser and V. Funk were detained in Minsk on March 12, 2008.
Zeltser hasn’t admitted his guilt. E. Zeltser’s relatives say his arrest is connected with a case a dispute over the estate of his client, Georgian oligarch Badri Patarkatsishvili who died in London. E. Zeltser is a former Soviet emigrant, an expert in combating organised crime and money laundering in Russia and former Soviet states. He was involved in the case of money laundering through the Bank of New York.
At the moment E. Zeltser stays in the prison hospital at the territory of the correctional colony No.15 in Mahilyou, V. Bruskova is in one of the correctional colonies in Homel.