Andrey Podnebenny. Photo: Viasna
A Russian national serving a nearly 17-year sentence in a Belarusian penal colony for his role in protests against the rule of dictator Alexander Lukashenko has died, his mother announced on Monday.
Andrey Podnebenny, 36, who had lived in Belarus since the age of six, was arrested in 2021 amid sweeping crackdowns on those who had protested against Lukashenko’s disputed victory in the presidential election the year before.
In 2022, a court in the city of Homyel sentenced him to 16 years and eight months behind bars for running a Telegram channel deemed “extremist” by the Belarusian authorities, as well as vandalising almost 40 trolleybuses and setting fire to the car of a senior prison official.
Writing on Facebook, his mother Valentina Podnebennaya said her son had died last Wednesday while serving his “excessive” sentence in the city of Mahilyow.
“Some bastard took away his freedom and then his life”, Podnebennaya wrote. “The only consolation is that no one will be able to physically or psychologically abuse my son anymore”.
Citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation, Radio Svaboda, the Belarusian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, reported that the cause of Podnebenny’s death was suffocation.
In a statement, exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said Podnebenny was “a loving son, a caring father and a hardworking man — but the regime labelled him a ‘dangerous terrorist’”.
“For the desire of a better future for his family, the regime first deprived him of freedom, and now, in prison, they took away the most precious thing — his life”, Tsikhanouskaya said, adding that Podnebenny had been subjected to both physical and psychological torture during his imprisonment.
According to Belarusian human rights group Viasna, Podnebenny is the ninth political prisoner to have died behind bars in the country since 2020, while almost 1,200 such prisoners remain behind bars.
In June, Belarus released 14 high-profile political prisoners as part of a US-mediated amnesty following a visit to Minsk by US Special Envoy Keith Kellogg. Among those freed was prominent opposition figure Siarhei Tsikhanouski, Tsikhanouskaya’s husband, who had been sentenced to 18 years in prison after attempting to challenge Lukashenko in the 2020 presidential election.