BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS
DATE:
28/03/2011
London urges Minsk to free all 'political prisoners'
Interfax-Ukraine
The United Kingdom has called political prisoners Dmitry Dashkevich and Eduard Lobov convicted in Belarus.
British Minister for Europe David Lidington said that the UK regarded Dashkevich and Lobov as political prisoners added to the long list of political prisoners in Belarus. The British embassy in Minsk quoted the minister in its press release received by Interfax on Monday.
The minister said he was seriously concerned about the sentence passed on Lobov and Dashkevich. Circumstances of the arrest, which took place ahead of the presidential elections of Dec. 19, looked very suspicious; witnesses gave contradictory testimony, and the defendants had no chance to see persons who were accusing them, he said.
The UK urges the Belarusian authorities to put an end to the shameful situation, to free all the political prisoners and to drop all the charges against persons pending a trial related to the protests of December 19, 2010, the press release said.
The Minsk Moskovsky District Court sentenced Young Front activist Dashevich to two years in a general regime penitentiary on March 24.
Lobov was sentenced to four years in a high security penitentiary. Both were charged with hooliganism. Detectives said that Dashkevich and Lobov battered two citizens with fists and a piece of metal for hooliganism reasons on December 18, 2010.
Source:
http://www.kyivpost.com/news/russia/detail/101015/
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