On Tuesday, Riga City Court decided not to alter the preventive measure imposed on former Riga City Council member Aleksejs Rosļikovs, meaning that the order for his detention remains in force, LETA learned from the court.
As previously reported, Rosļikovs has currently fled to Belarus.
Svetlana Čulkova, chairwoman of the board of the Stability! party, previously said that Rosļikovs plans to return to Latvia after the Saeima elections scheduled for this autumn. Rosļikovs is running as the second candidate on the Stability! party’s Riga electoral list. According to Čulkova, he will return to Latvia on the 4th of October to “immediately resume political work together with the party team.”
Asked whether Rosļikovs would return to Latvia even if the party failed to win seats in the 15th Saeima, Čulkova did not provide a specific answer, saying that the party was not even considering the possibility of failing to secure the 5% of votes required to enter parliament.
Rosļikovs said that the elections are not the finish line but the beginning of a new stage. “I will be in Latvia as early as the 4th of October to continue working for the benefit of our voters. Our team has a clear vision and is determined to defend people’s interests through concrete action rather than empty promises,” Rosļikovs stressed.
The party emphasises that regardless of the election results,
its priorities will remain active work for the benefit of society, regular dialogue with residents
and consistent implementation of its programme. Stability! says Rosļikovs’ return to Latvia will mark an important beginning of the next stage of its work, with the main objective being to represent voters’ interests and achieve practical solutions to issues of national importance.
As previously reported, the leading candidates on the Stability! party’s lists for the 15th Saeima elections will be Čulkova, Pāvels Kuzmins, Nataļja Marčenko-Jodko, Ludmila Rjazanova and Igors Orlovs.
It has also been reported that several MPs – Dmitrijs Kovoļenko, Iļja Ivanovs, Igors Judins and Amils Saļimovs – left Stability! at the beginning of this year. As a result, the party’s parliamentary group ceased to exist because it no longer had the minimum five MPs required to maintain a parliamentary faction. Čulkova, who chaired the party’s parliamentary group, said that the four remaining Stability! MPs would continue their work in parliament as independent members.
It was also reported that
at the end of May, Riga City Council decided to revoke Rosļikovs’ mandate as a city councillor.
The decision was taken because Rosļikovs had failed to attend more than half of the council meetings over a three-month period.
In addition, the Riga City Court in the Latgale District decided to change the preventive measure imposed on Rosļikovs, who had travelled to Belarus, ordering his detention. The request was submitted by prosecutor Kaspars Andruškins when the court convened for a hearing in the criminal case in which Rosļikovs is accused of inciting national hatred. At the same time, the court ordered that Rosļikovs be placed on the wanted list, and proceedings were suspended until he is located.
Rosļikovs acknowledged that he is in Belarus and explained that he did not attend the court hearing or return to Latvia because he feared for his life after receiving telephone threats from people who had threatened to “cut off his head.”
According to Rosļikovs, Latvia’s State Security Service had offered to place him in a safe house for six months, but he declined because he did not want to wait for the threats against him to be carried out.
Rosļikovs is accused of inciting national and ethnic hatred. He himself maintains that the case against him is politically motivated.
Read also: Belarus-fled Roslikovs reveals when he plans to return to Latvia