Zmitser Dashkevich: Horky colony is known for its most delusional correctional leadership

Mikalai Dzyadok has been transferred to the most dreadful colony, IK-9 in Horki, in order to put maximum pressure on him.

Such an opinion has been expressed by a co-chairman of the Young Front and a former political prisoner Zmitser Dashkevich.

Recently it has become known that a political prisoner, Mikalai Dzyadok, was transferred to a new place of serving the sentence, to the correctional colony of special regime IK-9 in the town of Horki, where Zmitser Dashkevich had been serving his sentence as well.

- The colony in Horki is known by the weirdest morals and the leadership which commits outrages. And Mikalai was transferred to Horki exactly to exert maximum psychological and moral pressure on him, – the politician said.

- How is this pressure put on him?

- The administration is doing their best to stay legally “clear”, and do everything by the hands of prisoners controlled by them. The head of the operation branch and the deputy head on operational and regime work, Petrakovich, is in control of “blatnye” (“criminals”). In my time there was Ivan Ivanou, a criminal boss. They play them off at an undesired prisoner. And then such “criminals” can do whatever they want: they can beat or sexually abuse a prisoner and make him belong to the lowest level of prison hierarchy.

- How are they going to treat Mikalai? After all, world community is following his situation.

- They won’t dare to beat Mikalai probably because of the close public interest. But it means that psychological pressure is to be used against him. A person is put in such a situation that the choice is: to serve the prison term in isolation cells from the beginning to the end, or to cut and demand transfer to another colony.

We remind that on February 26, 2015 the court of Zavadski district of Minsk found Mikalai Dzyadok guilty of malicious violation of the regime and sentenced him to a year and three days of deprivation of freedom. The term of Dzyadok’s imprisonment was to expire on March 3, however the court found him guilty of a new crime, and it postponed his release.

On April 30 when the complaint of the prisoner was considered, cassation board declined the application of Dzyadok to summon him to a court trial. Judges agreed to the opinion of the prosecution that the presence of the defendant was not necessary, as his position had been described in the documents of the complaint.

Mikalai Dzyadok was sentenced to 3 years’ term by the court of Zavadski district of Minsk on May 27, 2011. He was charged under Article 339 Part 2 of the Criminal Code of Belarus (malicious hooliganism). As human rights activists believe, the reason for that was Dzyadok’s participation in a peaceful demonstration near the Defence Ministry against joint Russian-Belarusian military drills.

Mikalai Dzyadok was to be released on March 3. The activist had served 4.5 years for alleged hooliganism actions against official buildings. He didn’t plead guilty and refused to apply for pardon from Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Half of the term Mikalai Dzyadok was kept in a “closed” prison as a habitual violator of the regime.

On February 26 by the decision of Leninski district court of Mahilyou he was sentenced to an additional year in a penal colony under Article 411 of the Criminal Code “for malicious insubordination to requirements of administration.” Belarusian human rights activists demand abolition of this article, which is a remnant of the Soviet court system and has no parallels in the laws of other post-Soviet countries.