Mikalai Statkevich Released From KGB Prison 278 27.03.2017, 9:35

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Mikalai Statkevich

The politician calls on the Belarusians to continue the struggle.

One of the Belarusian National Congress leaders Mikalai Statkevich was kept in a solitary cell in the KGB jail in complete isolation since Friday, March 24.

He announced it at a press conference immediately after his release, Charter97.org reports.

The politician was arrested in the apartment in Labanok Street in Minsk, where he was hiding, so as not to be arrested on the eve of the rally on Freedom Day. In the KGB prison, Statkevich was in the status of a suspect under Article 293 of the Criminal Code (organization of mass riots).

The BNC leader said that he had already spent 5 years in prison under this Article and refused to give any evidence.

While Statkevich was in the pre-trial detention center, special services hacked into his social networks accounts and sent out fake statements urging not to go to the rally on Freedom Day.

The opposition leader condemns the authorities' actions on Freedom Day. According to him, today Belarus is "an object of occupation".

Statkevich compares Lukashenka with Hitler and says that we must continue to fight.

This morning Statkevich was told in the KGB that he was being taken to investigative measures, put in a car and taken out of town to the district of the town of Sokol near the Minsk-2 airport.

When released, the politician was seized the decision on arrest and apprehension. According to him, now the authorities are going to deny the fact of his arrest, although he was kept in the cell № 16 of the KGB jail since Friday.

The politician says that he remembers the names of all the KGB officers, who signed documents on his case. The fact that the secret services deny his arrest, he associates with the authorities’ desire to get a loan from the West.

It is noteworthy that Lukashenka announced the existence of a criminal case against the so-called "terrorists" opened on March 19. But the criminal case, according to which Statkevich was accused at the KGB, according to the documents, had only been instituted on March 20.

Statkevich calls for fighting for the freedom of hundreds of political prisoners arrested on the eve and on Freedom Day.

"Intimidation of the society is not going to work out. The power strangles the protest with one hand, and creates it with the other. People will take to the streets," – the politician says.

According to him, it is necessary to change the tactics of protest: since the regime did not allow people to gather on Freedom Day, let’s take to the streets on official holidays, for example, on May 1 and May 9.

Now the main thing is not to let ourselves get intimidated, Statkevich is sure. According to him, the regime is unable to support itself because of the lack of money.