Former presidential candidate back behind bars in Belarus after refusing to leave country

A former Belarusian presidential candidate who was released from prison on Thursday by dictator Alexander Lukashenko is back behind bars in the Belarusian town of Hlybokaye after refusing to leave the country, Belarusian independent weekly newspaper Nasha Niva reported on Monday.

Prior to being pardoned last week, Mikalai Statkevich, 69, had been imprisoned at a penal colony in the same town in the country’s northern Vitsyebsk region.

On 11 September, Lukashenko released 52 political prisoners, including Statkevich, all of whom were promptly deported to Lithuania. However, Statkevich refused to leave Belarus and spent several hours on the Belarusian-Lithuanian border before returning to Belarusian territory, where he was detained and taken to an unknown destination by masked men.

The releases, which followed a meeting between Lukashenko and US President Donald Trump’s representative John Cole in Minsk on Thursday morning, come just three months after the US negotiated the release of 14 political prisoners in June, including Siarhei Tsikhanouski, one of Belarus’s most prominent opposition politicians. 

Statkevich, who ran against Lukashenko in 2010, was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2021 for organising “mass riots” for his role in the massive anti-government protests that convulsed the country following Lukashenko’s fraudulent re-election. He was tried alongside Tsikhanouski and blogger Ihar Losik, who ran the independent Telegram channel Belarus of the Brain, who was also among those released and deported to Lithuania on Thursday.