Opposition activist Raman Protasevich who was detained in Belarus on May 23 and brought from the pretrial detention facility to a press conference in Minsk on June 14 said that he had not betrayed anyone.
“Many people probably already consider me a traitor. Although I want to emphasize that I did not betray anyone. This is obvious,” Protasevich said following a press conference organized by the Belarusian Foreign Ministry to discuss the forced emergency landing of the Ryanair plane.
“I’m not sure I can disclose this, all I can say is partial,” the detained opposition activist said when asked whether he agrees with the accusations that the Belarusian authorities have brought against him.
He also commented on the possibility of changing his restraining measure. “I am charged under especially grave articles, and I do not think that it is possible to change the measure of restraint, for example, to house arrest or something like that. The investigators themselves should make a decision here. I cooperate with the investigation; I answer questions. Therefore, unfortunately, I am not deciding anything here,” the opposition activist said.
Protasevich noted that investigative activities concerning him and his interrogations take place quite often. “Everything is going quite quickly for me,” he said. The investigative activity is taking place in the presence of his lawyer, he said.
“I am in the pretrial detention facility, but they treat me normally. I have no complaints or grievances,” he added. “I was regularly examined by a doctor,” Protasevich said, adding that he was invited to be vaccinated against coronavirus. “I think I will even do this (vaccination) soon,” Protasevich said.
Commenting on the information that he has been sick with a certain disease at the pretrial detention center, he said that he suffers from chronic tonsillitis. “Nothing serious, just three or four times a year I can get a sore throat. I have no serious illnesses,” Protasevich said.
He said that he has “no complaints about my incarceration conditions.” “Now the place in which I am constantly being held, for me, it seems to me, the safest. I will tell you honestly, even if I were offered to be released now, I would ask myself for state protection,” the opposition activist who was brought to the press conference from the pretrial detention center thus described his incarceration.
As reported, on May 23, a Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius was forced to land at the Minsk airport. The airline company said that Belarusian air traffic controllers had informed the crew about a potential threat onboard. The information about a bomb on the plane was later disproved.
One of the passengers was the creator of the Nexta Telegram channel (designated extremist in Belarus), Protasevich. When the plane landed in Minsk, he was arrested, as was his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, a Russian student at the European Humanities University in Vilnius.
