Andrei Hniot’s health deteriorates in Belgrade prison due to denial of adequate medical care

The Nation­al Anti-Cri­sis Man­age­ment (NAM) appealed to the work­ing group of Euro­pean diplo­mats to facil­i­tate the pro­vi­sion of med­ical assis­tance to the Belaru­sian direc­tor Andrei Hniot, who is cur­rent­ly detained in Bel­grade, Ser­bia.

Andrei Hniot. Pho­to cred­it: Mak­sim Mali­nous­ki / onliner.by

As the NAM press sec­re­tary, Yulia Harachaya, informed Pozirk, the let­ter to the work­ing group, signed by the orga­ni­za­tion’s head, Pavel Latush­ka, men­tions that Hniot’s «leg sud­den­ly failed» while in deten­tion. He informed his friend of this via tele­phone. 

“There were no injuries or exter­nal dam­age, and there is essen­tial­ly no obvi­ous cause for paral­y­sis. Appeals to the prison admin­is­tra­tion remained unan­swered,” the let­ter reads.

Hniot has also request­ed that the court address the con­di­tions of deten­tion and the lack of prop­er med­ical care. This is not the first instance of the denial of med­ical care, includ­ing med­ica­tion for migraines, viral colds, and anti­de­pres­sants, NAM point­ed out.

The NAM said it would appre­ci­ate «any assis­tance that can be giv­en by diplo­mats in ensur­ing med­ical assis­tance to Andrei Hniot.»

The let­ter was sent to a group of diplo­mats on April 15.

The NAM spokes­woman, who is a per­son­al acquain­tance of the direc­tor, has indi­cat­ed that he receives a con­sid­er­able num­ber of let­ters from Belaru­sians from all over the world, which is very encour­ag­ing.

Fur­ther­more, she stat­ed that, accord­ing to Ser­bian law, if the direc­tor’s case is decid­ed in favor of the defend­er, it will have to be con­firmed by a high­er instance court and then by the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice. If the deci­sion is not in Hniot’s favor, alter­na­tive mea­sures will need to be tak­en to safe­guard his inter­ests. These may include request­ing asy­lum, fil­ing an appeal, and oth­er sim­i­lar actions.

On April 3, it became known that Hniot’s lawyers expect a court deci­sion with­in a month.

In pre­vi­ous Ser­bian instances, the case has been the sub­ject of sev­er­al hear­ings in March and April 1. 

Four lawyers are han­dling Hniot’s case, Harachaya told Pozirk on March 28.

On March 8, Pavel Latush­ka stat­ed that fol­low­ing the col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Nation­al Anti-Cri­sis Man­age­ment, Svi­at­lana Tikhanouskaya’s Office and the for­eign min­istries of Euro­pean coun­tries, a work­ing group was estab­lished to pre­vent Hniot’s extra­di­tion to Belarus. The group includes rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the for­eign min­istries and embassies of Poland, Ger­many, Croa­t­ia, Cyprus, Den­mark, the Czech Repub­lic, Bel­gium and Aus­tria.