Prison guards claim Babaryka’s health satisfactory, source doubtful

June 23, BPN. The administration of Navapołack’s Penal Colony No 1 claims that the health of jailed regime critic Viktar Babaryka is “satisfactory,” the politician’s allies have said in a Telegram post. However, a knowledgeable source has told BPN that “Babaryka’s diagnosis voiced in the media, a stroke, can be true.”

The former presidential hopeful may have suffered a stroke and is in a serious condition in a hospital outside Minsk, activist Valancin Łabačoŭ said yesterday, quoting the family of an unnamed political prisoner. “We haven’t seen him for two months. Does that mean that he is partially or completely paralyzed?” Łabačoŭ told Naša Niva.

The colony administration said that Babaryka’s health details were a medical secret. It also claimed that it was not blocking letters to him, his campaign said.

State Control Committee officers arrested Babaryka in June 2020. The Supreme Court sentenced him to 14 years in prison on corruption charges, which he denied. In April, a worker rights group reported his hospitalization with signs of beating and a collapsed lung.