Mikhail Volchak Is Finally Released from Jail :: Charter'97 :: News

On 11 March at a bus stop in Minsk four persons in plain clothes detained the fourth-year student of Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radio-electronics Mikhail Volchak. During the detention they broke his thumb. Later he was also beaten at Minsk Maskouski Borough Board of Internal Affairs. He asked for help, feeling heartache. The ambulance was called only 4 hours after he asked for it. Nobody informed his relatives about the detention, they found about it on occasion. On 13 March Mr Volchak was sentenced to 12 days of jail by the judge of Minsk Maskouski Borough Court Reutskaia. Before the trial an ambulance was called to Volchak. The medics demanded his urgent hospitalization because of hypertonic crisis, but he was taken back to the court. The policemen who beat him were also witnesses at the trial. They accused him of swearing (article 156 of the Code of Administrative Violations, petty hooliganism).

On 23 March, when the prison term was coming to an end, Mikhail’s relatives came to the gate of the detention center in Akrestsin St to meet him. They waited for him for two hours, but he didn’t come out. Later they found that Mr Volchak was taken to court and judge Reutskaia sentenced him to 15 more days of jail for alleged violation of the same article.

’The police lied to us and were very surprised when we managed to find out when and where the trial was to take place. They promised to imprison me, without any reason, simply because I am’, said Mikhail’s sister Volha Volchak. According to her, during the detention the ambulance was called to her brother several times for different reasons (hypertonic crisis, stomach aches, aches in the thumb, heartache).

On 7 April Mikhail Volchak was released from jail.