Passage: A political prisoner convicted to two years in jail for "public insult" to Belarus's iron-fisted leader Alexander Lukashenko was denied a requested one-day leave to attend his father's funeral, his family said. Valery Levonevsky, leader of the entrepreneurs' strike committee, was only allowed to phone home to voice his condolences, his son Vladimir told AFP late Thursday, saying the jail administration justified their decision by "repeated violations of regime" by Levonevsky.
condolences