Former political prisoner Mikalai Statkevich was sent home on February 19 without any documents. His legal status remains unclear. This was stated in an interview with LRT by the politician’s wife, Maryna Adamovich.
“Mikalai ended up at home on the evening of February 19. Without a passport, without any documents, without an epicrisis or any extract from medical records, without any understanding of his status. This creates major problems for providing prompt medical care. I can only say that today he looks and feels better than at the moment when I saw him in the prison hospital for the first time in three years and almost eight months,” she said.
It had previously been reported that Mikalai Statkevich suffered a cerebral infarction while in detention. He was hospitalised.
“The stroke, or more precisely a cerebral infarction, occurred on January 21. According to Mikalai, he was taken to Minsk that same evening, to a hospital. Mikalai is very grateful to the doctors for their professionalism. Today, most bodily functions have been restored,” Adamovich added.
She also told the Lithuanian television channel that, according to Mikalai Statkevich himself, after his return to the penal colony last year he stopped receiving the necessary medications, or they were replaced with less effective drugs.
“For example, instead of Rivaroxaban (Xarelto), they gave him ordinary aspirin. Draw your own conclusions. All this time I was looking for him, including so that he would not be left without the necessary medications that I sent to the colony,” she said.
“Today we have nothing to rely on: no understanding of his legal status or the possibility to travel for rehabilitation, no medical documents, not even a passport. Therefore, for now it is home, rest, walks, quality food, and the most essential medicines on the advice of the doctor who treated him,” she said.
According to her, Mikalai Statkevich has impaired speech, and communication is still difficult. She also said that she learned about her husband’s release unexpectedly.
“Exactly five minutes before it happened, when the head of the prison hospital said that if I wanted, I could take Mikalai home so that he could continue recovering at home. I asked, ‘What do I need to do for this?’ It turned out that I needed to submit an application addressed to the head of the hospital with a request to ‘release him for rehabilitation at home’.
That’s how simple it was. You can take your husband out of a prison hospital, a restricted facility, by submitting an application to the chief physician, or more precisely, the head of the hospital. However, I am already familiar with the official version of his release,” she said.
Last week, press secretary to Alyaksandr Lukashenka Natallia Eismant said that a request by Statkevich’s relatives to release him so that he could be cared for at home had been approved.
