December 27, Pozirk. Opposition politician Pavieł Sieviaryniec, who was released on December 13 and taken to Lithuania, described his forced deportation from Belarus as a lawless practice in a video posted on his new Telegram channel.
“I believe that we will definitely return and embrace each other on our native soil,” he said in a video shot in Vilnius, where he reunited with his wife and son. “I spoke Belarusian all the time, did not sign a petition for clemency and did not admit guilt,” said the politician who was held behind bars for five and a half years.
Seviaryniec was arrested in June 2020 in the run-up to the presidential election, which he used to promote his political agenda. In May 2021, he was given seven years in prison on charges of preparing mass riots.
Later, authorities blacklisted him as a person “involved in extremist activities” and transferred him from a penal colony to prison. He and the other 122 designated political prisoners were freed following the meeting between Aleksandar Łukašenka and John Coale, US special envoy to Belarus.
