Tikhanovskaya calls for mission to check on Pratasevich

Belarusian opposition politician Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya on Wednesday called for a special mission to check on the condition of dissident journalist Raman Pratasevich, who is being detained in Belarus. Tsikhanouskaya made the call during a visit to the Senate in Prague, where she said Pratasevich's lawyer had been denied from seeing him for 11 days.

"We are more than certain that he is being beaten and tortured, but there is no access to him and there is nothing that can be done," she said.

Raman Pratasevich was taken into custody after the forced downing of a flight he was on was passing over Belarus en route to Lithuania last month. He was taken into custody when the flight landed in Minsk. Belarus has faced sanctions over the incident, with western countries saying the move amounted to air piracy by Belarus. Pratasevich was a founder of a messaging app channel that was a key information conduit for opponents of Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Tsikhanouskaya is the wife of the jailed blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky, and ran for president after her husband was jailed. While Lukashenko won the election, the result was widely contested, and caused weeks of protests by hundreds of thousands of people, leading to a brutal crackdown by authorities. Tikhanovskaya now lives in exile in Lithuania.