Kyrgyzstan extradited Vladimir Kadaria to Minsk, who was detained in September last year at the request of the Belarusian authorities. This is reported by the Kyrgyz service of Radio Liberty with reference to his lawyer Avtandil Adimzhanov.
According to him, Kadaria was taken away from the pre-trial detention center on March 4. “He was taken away by representatives of our Ministry of Internal Affairs. They must hand him over to the second party. There was an appeal to the president, but despite this, they were taken away. There was a decision of the Prosecutor General’s Office, but the lawyers appealed against it. The Oktyabrsky district and Bishkek city courts refused to satisfy the lawyers’ complaint” , he said.
In my country blocked
present tense
Vladimir Kadaria is a citizen of Belarus. Fifteen years ago, he fled to Ukraine and received first refugee status there, and then a Ukrainian passport in the name of Andrei Kovalev. In September 2022, he was detained in Bishkek at the request of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus.
From the pre-trial detention center, he applied to the Ministry of Labour, Social Security and Migration to obtain refugee status and on December 9, 2022 he received such a certificate. However, in December, the Pervomaisky District Court of Bishkek issued a decision on his extradition, upholding the application of the Prosecutor General’s Office. His lawyers appealed to a higher authority, but on February 15, the Bishkek City Court upheld the decision of the first instance. After that, Kadariya appealed to the President of Kyrgyzstan, Sadyr Japarov, with a request not to extradite him.
As it became known, in 2008 the Belarusian authorities opened a criminal case against Vladimir Kadaria under the article “Theft of property by modifying computer information.” Kadaria himself calls the case fabricated and claims that he is being persecuted for political reasons. In Minsk, he worked as the administrator of a website that published opposition materials and articles about corruption among representatives of the Belarusian authorities.
“In August 2008, mass detentions and searches began, about 12 people were arrested, including me. They had information that we were conducting opposition activities on the Internet. My laptop and memory cards were confiscated with the hope of finding confirmation opposition activities. On laptops, all the information was stored in encrypted form, I was interrogated and released. And I decided to immediately leave the country,” he says.
The decision to extradite Kadariya was reacted to by the UN human rights and refugee offices. Representatives of the organizations stated that by this decision, Kyrgyzstan violates not only the international convention on the status of refugees, but also national legislation.
Sirojiddin Kamolidinov, spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office of Kyrgyzstan, said on the issue of Kadaria: “Everything was carried out within the framework of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Kyrgyz Republic and on the basis of the Minsk Convention. In addition, there are decisions of the courts.”
