Health of imprisoned journalist Siarhei Satsuk deteriorates

“He got very sick, devel­oped a fever, and his max­il­lary sinusi­tis aggra­vat­ed,” his rel­a­tives told the BAJ mon­i­tor­ing ser­vice. “He wrote that it struck him real­ly hard this time. But it was only when he devel­oped a severe cough that the doc­tor pre­scribed an antibi­ot­ic and even allowed two days of bed rest – an unprece­dent­ed relief. He still has heart issues and has had a cil­iary arrhyth­mia attack because he only takes half the dose of med­ica­tion he needs. He is not grant­ed access to the pills we sent ear­li­er, despite his requests. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, his con­di­tion is large­ly ignored.”

More­over, for unknown rea­sons, the polit­i­cal pris­on­er is reg­u­lar­ly trans­ferred from one cell to anoth­er, which affects his phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal well-being.

Most of the let­ters from the fam­i­ly do not reach Sat­suk.

Siarhei Sat­suk will spend at least the next few weeks in the deten­tion facil­i­ty in Mahil­iou – his appeal is to be con­sid­ered by the Supreme Court on Feb­ru­ary 10. If it is dis­missed, the pris­on­er will be trans­ferred to a cor­rec­tion­al colony to serve an 8‑year term of impris­on­ment.

Siarhei Sat­suk is not going to give up and is deter­mined to prove his inno­cence based on facts. The BAJ found out that he per­son­al­ly draft­ed the last ver­sion of the appeal against the “dis­pro­por­tion­ate sen­tence.” The jour­nal­ist had long spe­cial­ized in judi­cial mat­ters, so he knows the legal nuances as well as lawyers.

Siarhei Sat­suk is an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist and edi­tor of the Ezhed­nevnik news out­let (ej.by). He was detained on 8 Decem­ber 2021 and charged with bri­betak­ing, incit­ing social hatred, and abuse of pow­er or office.

On 26 Octo­ber 2022, Judge of Min­sk City Court Svi­at­lana Ban­daren­ka sen­tenced the defen­dant to 8 years of impris­on­ment and a fine.

He is also banned from hold­ing admin­is­tra­tive posi­tions for five years. To ensure the exe­cu­tion of the sen­tence, the prop­er­ty of the jour­nal­ist was seized: a car, lap­tops, tablets, mobile phones, and oth­er elec­tron­ic devices.