Another

Another Belarusian presidential candidate from the opposition, Alexei Mikhalevich, was released from the KGB pre-trial detention center in Minsk on the evening of February 19. He, like the rest of those released from among those accused of mass riots on December 19, was given an undertaking not to leave.

Among others, one opposition candidate, Andrei Sannikov, remains in custody. His wife, Novaya Gazeta correspondent and author of Ezhednevny Zhurnal Irina Khalip, previously released from pre-trial detention center, is under house arrest, as is opposition candidate Vladimir Neklyaev.

On February 17, the first of those accused of the mass riots, an activist from Neklyaev’s headquarters, Vasily Parfenkov, was sentenced. He was sentenced to four years in prison - the court believed that Parfenkov broke the doors of the Government House, although there is no evidence of this.