Belarus, mother Protasevich: “My son beaten to make him talk”

Roman Protasevich’s mother denounces violence in prison against her son by the Belarusian authorities. “I’m not a doctor, but he’s sure they may have hit him on the nose and broke it,” the dissident journalist’s mother told the dpa agency, referring to the video in which Protasevich appeared yesterday after his arrest. The woman also saw other signs of beatings on her son’s face, particularly on the left cheek: “Even under the make-up, you can see a yellow tinge, probably abrasions covered with powder,” she said. Furthermore, in the woman’s opinion, there are also evident signs of strangulation: “They suffocated him to make him confess evidence”. The journalist was also forced to make the statements heard in the video, according to the woman who lives in exile in Poland with her husband: “He read from a paper, or was forced to memorize it”. Sofia Sapega, the citizen Russian companion of Protasevich, she will remain in pre-trial detention for two months in Belarus. This was reported by the news site ‘Meduza’, citing the woman’s lawyer, Alexander Filanovich. Sapega was arrested Sunday in Minsk along with Protasevich after being picked up by the Ryanair plane on which they were traveling and which had been forced to land in Belarus. According to the lawyer, the woman was interrogated today and charged with a criminal offense.