A 22-year-old political prisoner has died in Belarus, rights campaigners say

Human authorities activists opportunity a 22-year-old governmental captive has died down bars successful Belarus

A 22-year-old governmental captive has died down bars successful Belarus, nan country's oldest quality authorities group said Saturday.

Russian-born Dmitriy Schletgauer, who had been serving a 12-year condemnation for espionage and “facilitating extremist activities” is nan seventh dissenter to dice successful jailhouse since Minsk launched a harsh and extended crackdown connected nan guidance successful 2020, nan Viasna authorities halfway said.

Huge protestation swept Belarus following a disputed election that gave authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko a sixth word successful office, and that his critics and nan West decried arsenic rigged. Authorities arrested tens of thousands successful response.

Human authorities groups opportunity that nan state now holds immoderate 1,300 governmental prisoners, and that galore are denied capable aesculapian attraction and interaction pinch their families.

According to Viasna, whose Nobel Peace Prize-winning laminitis Ales Bialiatski is himself imprisoned, Belarusian authorities person refused to disclose nan origin of Schletgauer’s death, which came connected Oct. 11 but has only go known recently.

“The decease of yet different governmental captive illustrates nan catastrophe successful Belarusian jails, wherever conditions person been created that represent torture, wherever governmental prisoners are denied aesculapian care, and guidance leaders person been held incommunicado for complete a year,” Viasna typical Pavel Sapelka told AP.

“A young man died down bars and nan authorities are responsible,” he said.

According to Sapelka, Schletgauer had go a begetter while successful detention. A Russian national who gained a Belarusian residency licence successful 2018, he had worked astatine a polymer works earlier his arrest, Sapelka said.

Exiled guidance leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, whose hubby Siarhei Tsikhanouski is serving a 19 1/2-year condemnation successful Belarus, has called for an independent investigation into Schletgauer’s death, and said world experts must beryllium allowed into nan country’s jails.

“We must study nan truth astir nan deaths successful prisons, which successful Belarus person turned into a achromatic hole. Urgent world action is needed to forestall more," Tsikhanouskaya said.