Dashkevich's prison term may be extended to one year

• 18.07.2012, 9:16

The Belarusian television says a new criminal case has been opened against Zmitser Dashkevich.

“Zona X” programme said this morning about a decision to initiate a criminal case against the political prisoner for “failures to obey orders of the colony administration”, Narodnaya Volya newspaper reports.

If found guilty, Zmitser Dashkevich may be given one more year in prison. We remind the opposition activist was sentenced to two years in prison for alleged hooliganism ahead of the post-election protests in 2010. He is expected to be released on December 18, 2012.

“Using article 411 of the Criminal Code is a rather widespread practice in Belarusian prisons,” Valery Levaneuski wrote on his website. “It is often used without grounds in relation to the inmates who have pride and demand the prison authorities to obey laws and respect prisoners' rights. Instead of taking measures to improve and correct inmates' behaviour, the prison authorities often keep other prisoners in fear. An inmate meets a choice – to perform criminal actions on orders of administration representatives (beat other inmates, etc) or to be an honest inmate. Those showing disobedience may receive the status of malicious violators of prison rules on trumped or ungrounded accusations and may be thrown into a punishment cell or a cell type facility and stand a closed-door trial for violation of article 411 of the Criminal Code.

The judicial practice shows that everyone, who faced accusations over article 411, was given prison terms without proper proceedings.”