Freed Belarus opposition leader urges Trump to help release all prisoners

VILNIUS: Belarus opposition figure Sergei Tikhanovsky, who was released following an appeal from the White House, said on Sunday that US President Donald Trump could secure the freedom of all Belarusian political prisoners.

A tearful and emaciated Tikhanovsky spoke to reporters in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius a day after he was released from several years of prison with more than a dozen others. “President Trump now has the power and opportunity to free all political prisoners in Belarus with a single word, and I ask him to do so, to say that word,” Tikhanovsky said.

The eastern European country still holds more than 1,000 political prisoners in its jails, according to Belarusian human rights group Viasna. Tikhanovsky said he hoped to return to Belarus “but when, I don´t know yet”.

“You have to understand, I spent more than five years alone in a solitary cell,” he said. “I was completely isolated. I have very little information and now I need to find out a lot of things.” Tikhanovsky was joined at the news conference by his wife Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who took the mantle of the opposition movement after he was jailed.