Marinich intends to come back to active political life

Mikhail Marinich, released on April 14, was brought to his apartment by militia car. Mr Marinich commented that he would take come rest, fix his health and come back to civil and political life.

Mikhail Marinich, former mayor of Minsk, ex minister of economic relations and Ambassador to Latvia, was detained in April 2004 and in December 2004 sentenced to 5 years of prison for the alleged misappropriation of computers granted by the American Embassy to Marinich-run NGO “Business Initiative”. US Embassy declared that they had no claims against Mr Marinich regarding computers; however Belarusian court did not take this statement into account.
Apart from computers, Marinich’s case initially included other charges – illegal storage of weapon, big amounts of unaccounted currency and theft of documents of state secret. Though these charges were quickly taken away, and many experts commented that criminal case against Mr Marinich was Lukashenka’s revenge against former official who had turned against head of state.

In 2001 mr Marinich ran for presidential elections. For this purpose he had retired from the position of Ambassador. Despite his initiative group had collected more than required 100.000 signatures in his support, many of these signatures mysteriously disappeared, and Mr.Marinich was not registered as a candidate.
There are grounds to believe that administration imprisoned Mr Marinich in order to prevent his nomination for 2006 presidential elections. Politician was sentenced to 5 years of prison, and then in February 2005 his prison term was cut to three and a half years. In summer 2005 it was already two and a half years because of amnesty. However multiple requests to release Mr Marinich early because of the critical health situation (Mr Marinich suffered a stroke and has a second category of disablement) were disregarded.  But suddenly shortly after elections and four days after Lukashenko’s inauguration Mikhail Marinich is getting released. He had only half year of his prison term left to serve.

Mikhail Marinich ctells that he would like to get back to active political life. But first he plans to take a medical rehabilitation course since his health has been broken.