Parfiankou’s verdict confirmed: year in high security prison

• 28.01.2014, 12:39

Court considered political prisoner Vasil Parfiankou’s appeal.

On 28 January Minsk city court considered political prisoner Vasil Parfiankou’s appeal against the verdict of the court of the capital’s Piershamajski district as of 5 December 2013 and confirmed the verdict of the first instance, BelaPAN reports.

We would remind that on 5 December court found Parfiankou guilty of violating the rules of the preventive supervision (article 421 of the Criminal Code): repeated failure to appear at police station for registration, coming home after 20.00. Parfiankou was sentenced to a year in high security penal colony with forced treatment of chronic alcoholism.

In the course of today’s court proceeding the activist’s counsel Volha Bezbarodkina claimed that the decision of the court of Piershamajski district was unfounded, since in the opinion of her client the verdict was passed for his active civic position, and the court’s decision was founded only on the testimonies of policemen witnesses. According the counsel, on trial in the court of first instance they confused their own testimonies so much that the court had to read them out from the documents.

Apart from that, the counsel submitted a motion for holding a stationary addictology expertise, since in Parfiankou’s opinion, the previous utpatient examination had been done on the purely formal basis. The findings of that laboratory expertise were the ground for sentencing Parfiankou to forced treatment and additional security measures. Howeverthe court denied the motion.

In her turn, the prosecutor did not agree with the defense’s argument, having claimed that the court of the first instance explored the case in full and comprehensively. She pointed out that the defense did not dispute the laboratory’s medical conclusion in the court of first instance.

Now the opposition activist is kept in jail in Zhodzina (Minsk region). Human rights activists assume that he will be serving the punishment term in the penal colony in Horki (Mahilou region).

In 2011 Vasil Parfiankou was tried in the framework of criminal case of mass disturbances in Minsk on 19 December 2010. He was sentenced to four years in high security prison, but released in August same year under president’s pardon decree. After that the former political prisoner repeatedly experienced persecutions on the part of the authorities.

Human rights activists see the persecution of the political prisoner as authorities’ revenge and an attempt to put pressure on civic activists.