Photos published online Tuesday showed jailed Belarusian protest leader Maria Kolesnikova meeting her father, in the first news on her since February 2023.
Kolesnikova was part of a trio of women who led mass protests in 2020 against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, in power since 1994.
JOIN US ON TELEGRAM
Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.
She has not been heard from since February last year when she sent a letter to her family and met with her lawyer, with fears rising over her health.
One picture published on Tuesday shows Kolesnikova in a prison uniform hugging her father and beaming. She appears thin and in a hospital setting. The other photo shows her by herself.
Exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya wrote on X: "I am deeply relieved that Maria Kalesnikava has been allowed to meet with her father. She has been kept incommunicado for more than 600 days, starved & isolated from her family."
Two pictures were posted on Telegram by Roman Protasevich, an opposition journalist who was imprisoned and then pardoned by Lukashenko.
Belarusian language newspaper Nasha Niva reported that former prisoners recognised the prison hospital in Gomel, where she is serving her sentence, in the photographs.
It also reported that there were rumours a video showing Kolesnikova would be published Friday.
Lukashenko announced this month that he had pardoned 31 political prisoners including two women, whose identity is not yet known, two months before an election in which he is set to extend his 30-year rule.
Estonia Moves to Ban Russian, Belarusian Residents From Voting in Local Elections
An orchestra flute player, Kolesnikova, 42, was one of the stars of a street movement that shook the Minsk regime.
She was imprisoned after ripping up her passport when the Belarusian security agency, the KGB, tried to forcibly deport her.
In 2021 she was sentenced to 11 years and is serving her sentence in a penal colony in the southeastern city of Gomel, near the Russian and Ukrainian borders.
Two ex-prisoners released from the same colony told AFP in September that Kolesnikova spends months in isolation in the harshest type of punishment cell.
"I am worried for her life," her sister Tatiana Khomich, who lives abroad, told AFP in September.
The source of the newly posted photos, Protasevich, was imprisoned after Belarus illegally diverted his Ryanair flight in 2021.
A journalist for Nexta Telegram channel, which helped mobilise protesters, he was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2023.
He was pardoned by Lukashenko after recording a "confession" video -- that his allies said was coerced -- and a tearful interview shown on Belarusian state television.
On Tuesday, he posted a video of himself walking down an institutional corridor to meet Kolesnikova, without giving any other details.
You can also highlight the text and press Ctrl + Enter
