MFA brings Raman Pratasevich to briefing. He states he is not betraying anyone «but just cooperating with investigation»

BBC reporter Jon­ah Fish­er left the MFA brief­ing in Min­sk, where they brought Prata­se­vich. «We just came out. Not tak­ing part when he is clear­ly there under duress.» — he tweet­ed.
 
At the begin­ning of the brief­ing, Raman Prata­se­vich said that the infor­ma­tion that he had been beat­en per­son­al­ly by Alexan­der Lukashenko was a joke.

The bruis­es on his hands vis­i­ble in the video released after his arrest were traces of zip ties.

Raman claimed he was fine, and had no com­plaints, «no one laid a fin­ger on me,» he said. He urged not to cre­ate rumors, because the hostages of this sit­u­a­tion are his par­ents in Poland and Sofia Sape­ha (who is in jail).

«I see that my par­ents are being used: they attend protest actions, etc. I am con­vinced that they can safe­ly return to Belarus.»

—  Mom, Dad, do not wor­ry, every­thing is just fine, —  he said.

Prata­se­vich claimed that nobody forced him to coop­er­ate with the inves­ti­ga­tion or to speak in pub­lic.  He said he under­stood «what dam­age he had caused to the state and the coun­try» and «wants to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion.» «I do not betray any­one, I do not turn any­one in. I am just coop­er­at­ing with the inves­ti­ga­tion, «- Prata­se­vich said.

Dur­ing the press con­fer­ence Raman asked the jour­nal­ists present, whether they believe him.

«Raman, sin­cere­ly I feel real­ly bad for you. Many of your col­leagues in Belarus feel bad for you. I can imag­ine what they could have done to you. And I don’t trust a sin­gle word from you.  Just hold on, just try to live through it,» — Bela­PAN jour­nal­ist Tat­siana Kar­avenko­va told Prata­se­vich.

Raman Prata­se­vich is charged under three arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code:

Arti­cle 342 «Orga­niz­ing and prepar­ing activ­i­ties that breach pub­lic order or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them»;

Arti­cle 293 «Mass riots»;

Arti­cle 130 «Incite­ment of racial, eth­nic, reli­gious or oth­er social hatred or dis­cord.»

Sofia Sape­ha was arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of com­mit­ting a crime under Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code (par­tic­i­pa­tion in mass dis­or­ders). She was also charged in anoth­er crim­i­nal case under Arti­cle 130 part 3 of the Crim­i­nal Code (incite­ment of social hatred and dis­cord).