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Kozulin said to have started withdrawal from hunger strike

Aleksandr Kozulin started coming out of his hunger strike on December 11, a source at Belarus' Ministry of Internal Affairs told BelaPAN.

According to the source, the prisoner himself wrote a statement that he wanted to abandon his strike. All the measures necessary in this case are being taken under doctors' supervision, the source said.

The chief of the ministry's Penalty Administration Department reported Monday on the situation regarding the prisoner's hunger strike to First Deputy Minister Aleksandr Shchurko.

The leader of the Belarusian Social Democratic Party "Hramada" went on the hunger strike on October 20, protesting what he called the Lukashenko government's lawlessness and demanding that the UN Security Council turn its attention to the situation in Belarus.

Dr. Kozulin, rector of Belarusian State University between 1996 and 2003 who was a candidate in Belarus' March 14-19 presidential election, was arrested during a police crackdown on a peaceful opposition march on March 25. On July 13, he was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in a minimum security correctional institution on charges widely believed to be politically motivated.

He has been held in the Vitba 3 correctional facility just a few miles off Vitebsk since September 21.