KYIV (Reuters) – A Belarusian prisoner detained in a crackdown last year tried to cut his own throat during a court hearing in Minsk on Tuesday after being told his family and neighbours faced prosecution if he did not plead guilty, Belarusian media reported.
Footage by Radio Svaboda showed Stepan Latypov lying on a wooden bench inside a prisoner’s cage in the courtroom, with police officers standing over him and onlookers screaming.
A second video showed Latypov being carried out to a waiting ambulance with what appeared to be blood spots on his shirt. Local media and the human rights group Viasna-96 said he was still alive.
“Belarusian activist, political prisoner Stsiapan Latypau cut his throat in the courtroom today,” exiled opposition figure Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya wrote on Twitter, using a different spelling of Latypov’s name.
“He was threatened with the persecution of his family if he didn’t admit himself guilty. This is the result of state terror, repressions, torture in Belarus. We must stop it immediately!”
The nearby guards could not open the prisoner’s cage immediately because they did not have the right keys, independent media outlet Nasha Niva reported. “By the time the cell was opened, Stepan had already lost consciousness,” it said.
The interior ministry spokeswoman could not immediately be reached for comment.
Latypov was arrested last September during an intensifying security crackdown by President Alexander Lukashenko on mass protests following a contested election the month before.
He was arrested in a Minsk courtyard that came to be known by some local residents and media as the “Square of Change”.
Latypov had stood in front of a mural there to try to prevent state workers, accompanied by police, from painting over opposition graffiti.
He was charged with organising riots, resisting police and fraud, and also accused on state television of planning to poison the police. He denies any wrongdoing.
Lukashenko’s government sparked Western condemnation late last month when a 26-year-old dissident blogger was arrested after the Belarusian authorities grounded a Ryanair plane travelling from Greece to Lithuania on May 23.
(Reporting by Matthias Williams and Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
