Belarusian former presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov, who has been in jail since 2010 on charges of inciting riots after presidential elections, was released on Saturday, Sannikov’s wife, Irina Khalip said.
Khalip, a journalist for the Belarusian Novaya Gazeta paper, contacted on Saturday her colleagues and said that Sannikov had just called her on the telephone from a railway station in the city of Vitebsk.
“As I was said he is currently on his way home,” Khalip told RIA Novosti.
She did not specify if other opposition activists had also been released.
In late January Sannikov who was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of inciting protests against President Alexander Lukashenko, asked the president for a pardon.
His wife said then that Sannikov had been tortured into writing the request for mercy.
