For his participation in the “riots”, the prosecutor asked that the historian be condemned to three and a half years of imprisonment, recalls “Nasha Niva “.<\/p>\n
“This is my last word, truly the very last. For all of my 40 years, I was not prepared to go to jail, I avoided criminal groups. For me as a historian, what I am seeing (now) is like a gift of fate.<\/p>\n
We have been carried back in a time machine to 1938. I find myself in a cell, because I love Belarus….,” declared Dmitrii Drozd.<\/p>\n
The judge interrupted him and told him to speak about factual matters.<\/p>\n
Drozd said that he had lived in Russia for seven years, he had a good job, he had a flat in central Moscow, but he wanted to do something more. He returned to Belarus, because he loved his country. “The elections were rigged,” Drozd repeated, calmly and confidently. The judge remained silent.<\/p>\n
“We who went to the Square had a reason for doing so. No one planned extremist actions. Otherwise I would have taken a bayonet, not a megaphone.<\/p>\n
The investigator told me straight away – if you do not plead guilty, you will get three and a half years; if you plead guilty – three years…<\/p>\n
For three blows on a board – three years of imprisonment. Is this normal? People were in peaceful mood, until they were beaten with batons. I understand why the prosecutor did not want to watch this video.<\/p>\n
Only in our country is white called black, and black called white.<\/p>\n
Belarusian Television is called “Goebbels-TV”, not without reason. It is impossible to view the situation in our country as normal.<\/p>\n
I do not see any point of law which I have violated.<\/p>\n
I went to the doors last, when the security forces were already running about. I have received my punishment from the riot police, without leaving the place – on the head and on the back. I served 10 days of administrative punishment in Jodino. Now I’m spending my fourth month in jail. They count me as a bad criminal, who is fleeing from the country.<\/p>\n
I am not an extremist, but a man who loves his country. I ask you to give me eight or ten years, but that I might be at home and realize my creative plans,” Drozd declared.<\/p>\n
The verdict on Dmitrii Drozd, as well as Pavel Vinogradov, Ales Kirkevich, Andrei Protasenya and Vladimir Homichenko will be given today at 17.00.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This was stated by the activist from Andrei Sannikov’s campaign team, historian Dmitrii Drozd, during his last speech at the trial of those who participated (in the protest) at the Square.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":215944,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202491"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}