A 22-year-old political prisoner has died in Belarus, rights campaigners say

A 22-year-old political prisoner has died behind bars in Belarus, the country's oldest human rights group said Saturday.

Russian-born Dmitriy Schletgauer, who had been serving a 12-year sentence for espionage and “facilitating extremist activities” is the seventh dissenter to die in jail since Minsk launched a harsh and extensive crackdown on the opposition in 2020, the Viasna rights center said.

Huge protest swept Belarus following a disputed election that gave authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko a sixth term in office, and that his critics and the West decried as rigged. Authorities arrested tens of thousands in response.

Human rights groups say that the country now holds some 1,300 political prisoners, and that many are denied adequate medical care and contact with their families.

According to Viasna, whose Nobel Peace Prize-winning founder Ales Bialiatski is himself imprisoned, Belarusian authorities have refused to disclose the cause of Schletgauer’s death, which came on Oct. 11 but has only become known recently.

“The death of yet another political prisoner illustrates the catastrophe in Belarusian jails, where conditions have been created that constitute torture, where political prisoners are denied medical care, and opposition leaders have been held incommunicado for over a year,” Viasna representative Pavel Sapelka told AP.

“A young man died behind bars and the authorities are responsible,” he said.

According to Sapelka, Schletgauer had become a father while in detention. A Russian citizen who gained a Belarusian residency permit in 2018, he had worked at a polymer plant before his arrest, Sapelka said.

Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, whose husband Siarhei Tsikhanouski is serving a 19 1/2-year sentence in Belarus, has called for an independent investigation into Schletgauer’s death, and said international experts must be allowed into the country’s jails.

“We must learn the truth about the deaths in prisons, which in Belarus have turned into a black hole. Urgent international action is needed to prevent more," Tsikhanouskaya said.