You're reading: Lukashenko ready to expel all political prisoners to EU

Those convicted in connection with the December 19 events do not belong in prison but should be deported to the European Union, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko has said.

"If the EU wants to take them, tomorrow we’ll issue tickets and send them off. No problem – let them take them. If they have so much sympathy for political prisoners, tomorrow we will put them all into a railway carriage, and I will make a decision that I have the power to make, and all those who walk free today and moo at squares [those who received suspended sentences], all whom they sympathize with – into a carriage and out…," Lukashenko told reporters in Shklov during a working trip to the Mogilev region.

"If they want it faster, I will give a plane. We will transport them right away, let them take them," he said.

Commenting on the unauthorized actions staged within the framework of the "Revolution Through Social Networks" initiative, Lukashenko accused participants of trying to make use of the current economic difficulties to destabilize Belarus.

"All that shabby mass, a fairly small one, which hangs about squares, half mooing, half stamping, half shouting… They just want to seize the occasion. They are perfectly aware that we will manage to walk out of this situation, out of panic. And that’s what we have been doing," Lukashenko said.