Natallya Radzina at “Hot Commentary”: Can you mean that there were not enough political murders?” (Video)

• 27.01.2012, 2:17

Andrei Sannikov’s petition for clemency has been found, informed the Interior Affairs Ministry yesterday evening.

The documents were received by the presidential administration on January 23.

At the same time, it was refuted that physical and moral pressure is being exerted on prisoners. Moreover, the resolution of the parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted in Strasbourg, is “an ordinary routine document that is based on questionable materials and false accusations taken from Internet,” as Spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of Belarus Andrei Savinykh said, Belsat TV channel informs.

Andrei Sannikov was kept in isolation for more than a month. As said by his wife Iryna Khalip, who met the prisoner on January 24, he looked as if he had spent 10 years in Stalin-era concentration camps.

The editor-in-chief of charter97.org Natallya Radzina says that the statement of the Interior Affairs Ministry is a lie.

“Andrei Sannikov himself told his wife during their meeting at the colony that the petition was written back on November 20. That is, the Interior Affairs Ministry should explain now: why Lukashenka did not react to it, though the petition had been written almost two months earlier. And also I want to stress that the petition had been extorted by torture, Sannikov was threatened with death of his wife and son. And now the Interior Affairs Ministry states that the petition is just an excuse,” the journalist says.

The statement of the Interior Affairs Ministry that torture had not been used against political prisoners also looks unconvincing. The fact of tortures had been recognized by the UN, and political prisoners stated about that.

“It has become clear today that Lukashenka does not need any petitions, he has another aim: not to allow the political prisoners be released from prisons alive,” Natallya Radzina underlined.