Igor Losik’s wife shared how her husband is being tortured in prison – but this won’t break him
29 September 2020 | KYKY.ORG
Source: Radio Liberty
On June 25, 2020 law enforcement officials detained Igor Losik, a consultant for Radio Svaboda and administrator of the Telegram channel Belamova. His wife Daria shared about the inhuman conditions in which her husband is held, and demanded Igor’s immediate release.
“My name is Daria Losik. My husband, Igor Losik, a consultant of Radio Svaboda, was detained on 25 June near his own house in Baranavichy. Since then, neither I, nor our daughter Paulina, who is about two years old, nor his parents have seen him.
My husband is accused in a criminal case in which Siarhei Tsikhanouski, Nikolai Statkevich, Pavel Sevyarynets and dozens of other people are a target of the investigation. Igor is not guilty. He is accused of organizing and participating in riots under Part 1, Article 342 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus. Absurdity of the accusation is clear to absolutely everyone – on that day Igor was not even in the city of Hrodna.
However, following the detention, my husband is still being held in custody. At first – in pre-trial detention center #1 on Volodarsky street. In August he was transferred to prison #8 in Zhodzina. All this time Igor is intentionally being held in horrible conditions, transferred from one prison cell to another, deprived of letters and newspapers. It just comes to the point of absurdity: as soon as he got a TV they intentionally transferred him to another cell in the basement so that the antenna would not receive the signal. He is even being deprived of propaganda source of information and being kept in an information vacuum. But lately, abuse has reached an extreme point.
Using threats and intimidation, Igor is forced to incriminate himself and falsely implicate other people, сonfess to the things that propagandists, investigators and operatives come up with.
At the same time, they themselves don’t quite understand what exactly my husband should confess to!
On Sunday Igor got a new cellmate. With pediculosis, not sanitized, with six convictions. That same day my husband and his cellmates were transferred to another cell in the basement.
The size of this room does not allow one to take even a few steps in it. You can either sit or stand there. In the daytime, it’s prohibited to lie down under the threat to be put in a solitary confinement. There is only one thing to do with no access to newspapers and letters – look at the wall. Day after day. At the same wall. Instead of a toilet bowl, this cell has a hole in the stone floor, where the drain practically doesn’t work. The bathroom sink is broken. There are no partition-walls. The toilet hole is located right next to the food dispensing window and the peephole used by a guard. A so-called cell window is covered with a sheet of metal. It’s terribly cold and damp in the cell. But it’s not allowed to bring warm clothes for Igor, since, according to the authorities, it is not yet the season.
These extremely terrible conditions, along with the lack of access to media, delays in correspondence delivery, threats against Igor himself and his family: myself, my daughter, his parents – all of it undermine both the physical and mental health of my husband.
My husband and the father of my daughter is being tortured and being held in inhuman conditions.
I, Daria Losik, the wife of the political prisoner Igor Losik, declare: you will not be able to break my husband. Igor will not confess to what he was never involved in. He will never attest to all of these propaganda stories and dirt poured on him from TV screens and garbage sites. He will not incriminate neither himself nor other honest people, patriots of Belarus.
By putting more pressure on Igor, you won’t achieve your goal. But you can go too far. I declare that all responsibility for the life and health of my husband and the father of my child now is on the authorities.
Specifically, on the leadership of the Central Office of the Investigative Committee, which brought charges against Igor that are ridiculous in their absurdity. On the leadership of the General Prosecutor’s Office, who buried its head in the sand and went blind. On the leadership of the Main Office for Combating Organized Crime, that not only beats shop windows on Sundays, during work hours condones pressure on innocent people, including Igor. On investigators, detectives, prosecutors who shrug their shoulders, scattering the phrase “you do understand everything”.
I do not understand! I refuse to understand. I demand! I demand to stop putting pressure on my husband! I demand to release him from custody. I demand to stop the abuse of him and our family”.
