Horrible testimony of political prisoner Dziadok in court: smothered with a pillow to give out passwords

«I have lived in the town of Sas­novy since June 2020, hav­ing left Min­sk where mass arrests were tak­ing place. 

Regard­ing the charges under arti­cle 342: I did not par­tic­i­pate in march­es, as I was afraid I would be arrest­ed. With one excep­tion —  on August 23, my birth­day. It was a spon­ta­neous deci­sion. I went on my own. I did­n’t see police warn­ing peo­ple that they were break­ing the law.  I did not block pub­lic trans­port as the road had already been full of peo­ple, and there was no trans­port, —  Dzi­adok said. —  

Regard­ing the charges under arti­cle 295: GUBOPiK offi­cers plant­ed the bot­tles with flam­ma­ble sub­stances on me. I looked in that cup­board ear­li­er, there were no bot­tles. Dur­ing my arrest, sev­en offi­cers burst through my doors and the bal­cony. First thing they asked me, where else I had cam­eras in the house: there was a dum­my cam­era on the bal­cony, remain­ing from the pre­vi­ous ten­ant. Then some offi­cers ran into dif­fer­ent rooms for about a minute. 

Dur­ing the search, I said that the bot­tles were not mine. They had a strong unpleas­ant smell, and the wit­ness­es to the search noticed that, too.  Why would I keep that in the house, more­over, in a place where I eat?

Lat­er, in the GUBOPiK office, I was forced to touch the bot­tles, spit on them, and they stuffed the bot­tle­necks in my mouth. Lat­er experts did­n’t find any of my fin­ger­prints on the bot­tles. I believe that GUBOPiK told them not to, to make me look like a liar when I talk about tor­ture.»

Mikalai described the details about his deten­tion and tor­ture:

«On Novem­ber 11 the secu­ri­ty offi­cers broke into the apart­ment through the bal­cony and the doors. I only had time to get up and close the lap­top lid, I did not resist them. They put me on the floor and hand­cuffed me right away. 

There were three of them wore riot gear, and four were in plain clothes. A few of them went into dif­fer­ent cor­ners of the apart­ment. I could­n’t see what they were doing because I was lying face down on the floor. They imme­di­ate­ly began to beat me, they beat me for any attempt to move. One of them said, you know that you won’t get out of the cool­er, don’t you?

I did­n’t tell them the pass­words to my lap­top, and they beat me for that. When I start­ed to scream, one offi­cer took a pil­low from the couch and pressed it against my head. I could­n’t breathe and tried to yell that I would give them the pass­words, but they did­n’t hear me through the pil­low. They kept the pil­low on my face for some time. When it was removed, I said that I for­got the pass­word in such a stress. They con­tin­ued to beat me.

After I told them the pass­word, they did­n’t beat me for some time. GUBOPiK offi­cers com­ment­ed: «You thought you were in a safe place?» «You said pres­sure could be psy­cho­log­i­cal or phys­i­cal. Today you’ll get both», «So, Miko­la, you thought you man­aged to hide well? Should I piss on you or what?», «Now we’ll go to the for­est, take your clothes off and see what you sat­is­fy women with», «So, let’s go to Gestapo now.» As I under­stand by «Gestapo» they meant GUBOPiK main office. 

Then they told me to stand up. They did­n’t let me look at their faces, and hit me when I raised my head. They said, if I com­plain to the wit­ness­es to the search, they would beat and humil­i­ate me all the way to Min­sk. If I am silent, our trip will be fine.

Dur­ing the search, one of the offi­cers took wom­en’s dress­es out of the clos­et and tried to see how they would look on me ask­ing every time «Is it yours?» Oth­er offi­cers laughed.

When they got to the bot­tles in the pres­ence of wit­ness­es, I said right away that they were not mine. One of the offi­cers said he would beat me even in front of the wit­ness­es. The wit­ness­es pre­tend­ed not to notice. The same offi­cer tried to hit me when the wit­ness­es did­n’t see us.

I had a video cam­era, a tri­pod, a watch and a wal­let with about 1000 BYN: but they were not in the list of the things that they seized. The land­la­dy could not find them in the house either. I believe they were stolen by GUBOPiK offi­cers. I filed a com­plaint to the Inte­ri­or Min­istry’s Inter­nal Affairs Depart­ment.

After the search and count­ing my mon­ey the offi­cers made a «still life» com­po­si­tion of my stuff: they laid out a knife, mon­ey, an anar­chist poster, a red and black flag, bot­tles with Molo­tov cock­tail, and took pic­tures of it all on their smart­phone. Then they let the wit­ness­es go.

They put me with my face to the wall. From time to time they beat me on the head, back, or legs. I asked what they were beat­ing me for. One replied that I am a write off, and the oth­er said: «to get moral sat­is­fac­tion». Oth­ers joked and laughed.

Then they stepped away for me not to hear them.  The offi­cers in plain clothes, by the way, were con­stant­ly call­ing and report­ing to their boss­es. After a short dis­cus­sion, they came back to me and said that they would record a video with me: «We will do it any­way, it’s up to you how painful it will be.» 

Then they hit me, I hit my head against the wall and fell. 

They asked if I would talk on video. I was silent. Then they sprayed tear gas in a small pantry and locked me in there.

I could­n’t breathe and said I would say any­thing they want to. 

They took me out­side, to the court­yard.  One held me from the back by the hand­cuffs, the oth­er one sprayed pep­per spray in my face. Four times.

They brought me back to the apart­ment, and left alone for a minute, I guess, wait­ing for the max­i­mum effect of the pep­per spray and the tear gas. Then one of the offi­cers —  the oth­ers called him Inves­ti­ga­tor —  told me that if I say every­thing as they want me to they would let me wash my face. I said every­thing they told me to and they shoot the video with a smart­phone.

Then they let me wash, and took off one of the hand­cuffs. While I was wash­ing my face, one of the offi­cers kept snap­ping his stun gun behind my back and asked if I knew what a dis­co dance is.

Then they let me pack and get dressed. At this time, they did­n’t beat me, but humil­i­at­ed and mocked me. They even sug­gest­ed that I should make a sand­wich to take along, but I refused.

They took me to Min­sk in a van, me sit­ting on the floor. On the way they did not beat me, but talked to me. They were say­ing that the major­i­ty vot­ed for Lukashenko, and those who said the oppo­site were liars. A young offi­cer said activists and blog­gers were the ones who cre­at­ed a volatile envi­ron­ment, and then won­dered why they got arrest­ed!

We arrived in Min­sk at about 1 a.m. They took me to the GUBOPiK build­ing with a hood on my head, in the room they made me kneel fac­ing the wall. They asked for the pass­word to my hard dri­ve and said: «Miko­la, it’s going to hurt now.» 

I asked to use the toi­let, and they let me, but returned me to a dif­fer­ent room. There were sev­er­al offi­cers, one had my lap­top. Lat­er he would give the orders: when to beat me, and when to stop.

All offi­cers were masked, but still tried not to let me look them in the face.

They laid me on the floor. An offi­cer in black with a baton entered the room, they called him «Hena». They asked for the pass­word to my hard dri­ve, I said that I did­n’t remem­ber it. They start­ed beat­ing me with batons: arms, but­tocks, back, calves. They threat­ened that they would hit me in the gen­i­tals and rape me with a baton, they said they would use stun gun on me and piss on me.

After four or five ses­sions of beat­ing I told them the pass­word. But they entered it incor­rect­ly and start­ed beat­ing me again. 

Dur­ing the beat­ing I screamed hard. At some point, some­one came up to the doors —  I guess it was a duty offi­cer, because oth­er­wise the build­ing seemed emp­ty. Offi­cer T*** (Dzi­adok gave the full last name, but we do not pub­lish it to avoid libel charges —  «NN») told him to f*ck off and said if that good man came again, he would beat him, too.

Then they start­ed to demand my Telegram pass­word. I did­n’t remem­ber it, but told them where the file with a pass­word was. They beat me sev­er­al times dur­ing that time.

They changed their tac­tics: now they first beat me, and then asked ques­tions. They noticed that I’m try­ing to avoid the blows —  and one of them start­ed to step with his foot on my face to pre­vent me from mov­ing while being beat­en.

When they got access my Telegram account, then began to dis­cuss aloud what they should do with my chan­nel. They asked, how soon my col­leagues would cry foul over my dis­ap­pear­ance.  Then the offi­cer with my lap­top said he would write to my girl­friend that I was fine. And he did, he wrote her from my account, in Belaru­sian, in my style.

Then they beat me some more, for no rea­son. They tried to hit in the same place. One of them said he got tired after beat­ing me.  And returned to his desk say­ing «old age — no joy». The oth­ers laughed.

I was threat­ened that if I did not say what they want­ed, after 6 am new GUBOPiK offi­cers would come and beat me all in turn. I asked why they beat me if I had already giv­en away all the infor­ma­tion they need. Their answer was: just because you are who you are.»

Dur­ing Dzi­adok’s tes­ti­mo­ny one of the women in the audi­ence could not help qui­et­ly cry­ing. 

Mikalai con­tin­ued:

«Then offi­cer T*** brought bot­tles with [Molo­tov] cock­tail.  He ordered me to take them in my hands and squeeze them, spit on them, and stuffed the bot­tle­necks in my mouth. Then he packed the bot­tles in plas­tic bags.

Anoth­er offi­cer con­tin­ued to work with my telegram, ask­ing about the peo­ple who we exchanged mes­sages with, and about oth­er chan­nels. He asked who of police offi­cers helped the pro­test­ers. Who funds the protests?

He asked why I pub­lished the per­son­al infor­ma­tion about some police offi­cers? I said, for flag­ging their behav­ior.  They start­ed beat­ing me again.

Then I was lift­ed up and giv­en some papers to sign with­out read­ing.

Humil­i­a­tion con­tin­ued. One said, let’s piss on him! 

They asked: So, Miko­la, do you want to livestream from here?

T*** sug­gest­ed: «Let me sit on him, and you take a pic­ture of us!» But the oth­ers did not sup­port his idea.

They put me near a red-green flag and ordered to apol­o­gize to the police offi­cers for pub­lish­ing their data. And to advise oth­ers not to do that. T *** said: say it the right way, and I will not beat you any­more. But anoth­er offi­cer in black added: I can’t promise that.

Here T *** began to demand that I said to the cam­era, that I’m a schmuck and a scum­bag… »

Here Judge Anas­ta­sia Pap­ko stopped the tes­ti­mo­ny. She asked dzi­adok not to use obscen­i­ties. 

He replied, «But I only quote them! You need to tell that to the offi­cers.»

«I did not say what they T*** demand­ed —  con­tin­ued Dzi­adok. —  T*** also want­ed me to cry on the video. He told me: «Shed a tear, or we let make you to! But I did not cry. 

After shoot­ing a young offi­cer with the cam­era sug­gest­ed that they should make me remove the flag from the build­ing and burn it, and then change the time set­tings on my smart­phone and shoot the whole scene on video. I guess, to press some more charges against me. But oth­er offi­cers laughed and dis­missed his pro­pos­al.

They laid me on the floor. They demand­ed my word of hon­or that I would nev­er say, or write any­thing bad about GUBOPiK offi­cers. They warned that if I told some­one what hap­pened here, they would vis­it me in the deten­tion cen­ter and every­thing that had already hap­pened would seem a joke to me.

I agreed with every­thing.

Offi­cers said that I would have to leave the coun­try, as there would be no life for me here.  They also said that I’d get 7–9 years in jail, and only in the best case sce­nario, if I co-oper­ate with the inves­ti­ga­tion. And if I com­plain about what hap­pened here, they would press charges under arti­cle 411 («dis­obey­ing the prison admin­is­tra­tion» — «NN»), there would be no life for me in jail, and I will be «turned out».

T*** said: «There are inmates who coop­er­ate with us, you know it from your pre­vi­ous jail expe­ri­ence.  If you open your mouth about our staff, I will come to your jail and per­son­al­ly kill you with a baton, and then drown you in the shit hole. You chose the wrong ene­mies, no sense to fight us.»

They asked again what I was going to tell the deten­tion cen­ter admin­is­tra­tion about the injuries. I replied that I would say that I had fall­en.

Then they took me to Akrestsi­na jail. In the car, I start­ed shak­ing. One of the offi­cers asked what was wrong, and began to wor­ry that I could throw up in the car. «He’s got jim-jams, can’t you see?» — said anoth­er offi­cer. 

The car clock showed 5:24 am. 

The dri­ver once again remind­ed me to keep silent about every­thing that had hap­pened. He said if I com­plain, or tell my lawyer or the court —  I would nev­er come out. 

In the deten­tion cen­ter, the GUBOPiK offi­cer left only after my exam­i­na­tion —  to make sure that I did not com­plain. 

I would just add: from the moment of my release in 2015, I was arrest­ed 4 times, and tried for extrem­ist mate­ri­als 9 times —  that is, for my posts on social media.

I con­sid­er every­thing I described above as a strug­gle against the free­dom of speech and per­son­al revenge by GUBOPiK staff.

Lat­er I learned that my fam­i­ly and friends receive threats. After my arrest they received anony­mous mes­sages that the worst thing would hap­pen to me in jail, I will be «turned out», and that they would kill me and say I had heart prob­lems. 

Despite it all, I do not plead guilty. My activ­i­ties are and will be of edu­ca­tion­al nature, and my goal is to build free soci­ety.»