Belarusian politician Mikola Statkevich returned to prison after refusing 'forced deportation'

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Belarusian politician Mikola Statkevich has been returned to prison after being freed in a U.S.-brokered deal but refusing to leave his native country, activists aid Tuesday.

The former presidential candidate has been missing since Sept. 11, when a group of political prisoners were pardoned by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko at the request of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Statkevich was placed on a bus that day with other released prisoners and transported to the Belarusian-Lithuanian border. However, the 69-year-old refused to leave Belarus in what he described as a “forced deportation,” instead kicking down the door of the bus and waiting for several hours in the no-man’s land between the two countries. He was eventually escorted away by Belarusian police.

The Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs confirmed to Statkevich's wife, Maryna Adamovich, that he had been returned to prison and “continues to serve his sentence,” she told reporters Tuesday. The politician was sentenced in 2021 on charges of organizing mass unrest in a case that human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have described as politically motivated.

Belarusian officials have not confirmed where Statkevich is being held. After the politician’s disappearance, Adamovich visited the penal colony where the politician was previously held, but authorities refused to confirm his presence there. She also received no information on his health.

“I used to at least know where he was, but now I don’t even know that,” Adamovich told reporters. “I’m very concerned for Mykola’s health; he suffered a heart attack in prison.”

Pavel Sapelka, a lawyer and representative for the Viasna human rights organization, told The Associated Press that Statkevich was pardoned by presidential decree and therefore should have been a free man on his return to Belarus.

“We see legal chaos when political prisoners without passports are expelled from the country, arbitrarily thrown back into prison, and held incommunicado,” Sapelka said.

Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron first for over 30 years, has tried to repair relations with the West in recent months. Statkevich was part of a group of 52 prisoners, most of them jailed on political grounds, freed weeks after Minsk held a phone call with Trump in August. In return, sanctions were lifted from the country’s national airline, Belavia.

According to Belarusian authorities, Minsk and Washington intend to hold further talks in December.

During his decades of political activity, Statkevich was imprisoned on three occasions and has spent more than 12 years behind bars.

There are currently 1,246 political prisoners in prison in Belarus, says Viasna, including Nobel Prize winner Ales Bialiatski.