Belarus prisoners forcibly deported to Lithuania after US deal, says opposition

Belarusian prisoners released from jail and exiled to Lithuania in a US-brokered deal have said they were confused over having to leave Belarus – especially as many were almost due to be freed anyway.

Belarus freed 52 prisoners including an EU employee on Thursday after an appeal from Donald Trump as Washington and Minsk consider a rapprochement that many European leaders have viewed with scepticism.

The exiled opposition says freed political prisoners should have the right to stay in Belarus rather than submit to what it says are in effect forced deportations.

“I wanted to go home, to my home in Belarus. They brought me here,” one of the released prisoners, Aleksandr Mantsevich, told Reuters outside the US embassy in Vilnius, where he had been driven from the Belarus jail.

About half of the prisoners released on Thursday by the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, were almost at the end of their jail terms, said Franak Viačorka, a senior opposition official.

“Just imagine, they were looking forward to getting free soon and suddenly they find themselves deported, separated from family, they don’t have passports and they can’t go back,” he said.

Mikola Statkevich, an opposition politician and one of the most high-profile of those released, refused to enter Lithuania on Thursday and went back to Belarus. His wife, Marina Adamovič, who is in Belarus, told Reuters on Friday that she had had no contact with him since then.

Viačorka said that Statkevich would probably be rearrested. “Lukashenko’s regime has a problem, because he was officially released from jail but they cannot allow him to go home in Belarus. They will probably give him another criminal case,” Viačorka said.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the leader of the opposition, who lives in exile, said the west should demand that Lukashenko allow former political prisoners to stay in the country. “People have to have the right to stay in Belarus,” she said.

Outside the US embassy in Vilnius, many said they sympathised with Statkevich’s decision not to leave.

“I want to go back home. I cannot imagine my life without Belarus. I want to go home,” Iryna Slaunikava, an opposition journalist who spent two years and eight months in jail, told Reuters. “I don’t know if this is safe, but I really want to go home. I served out almost all of my sentence, with four months remaining. Haven’t I earned the right to live at home?” she asked.

Pavel Vinogradov, another former prisoner, said he had been due to meet his son for the first time in four years on Saturday, but instead found himself in Lithuania. “Yesterday, when they put a sack on my head and took me somewhere, I knew I am getting out,” he said. “I hope my wife eventually comes here, and I meet my son in the European Union.”