Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said on Tuesday she had received an anonymous message saying her jailed husband Sergei Tikhanovsky, who she has not heard from since March, was dead.
"Today I received a very strange and horrifying message. An unknown person wrote that my husband, Siarhei, has died in Zhodino prison," Tikhanovskaya said in English on Twitter.
"There is no evidence or proof for this claim. This isn't the first time such rumours have circulated and I don't know how to comment on this. I haven't heard from Siarhei since March 9 and lawyers are denied access to him," she wrote.
Belarus is an authoritarian state in which opposition voices and independent media have been stifled during President Alexander Lukashenko's nearly three decades in power.
The Belarusian human rights organisation Viasna says there are now more than 1,500 political prisoners in Belarus.
Tikhanovsky planned to run against Lukashenko in the August 2020 presidential election but was arrested and detained before the vote.
His wife Svetlana -- a political novice at the time of his arrest -- took his place in the polls and was widely believed to have won the election.
In 2021, Tikhanovsky was sentenced to 18 years in prison followings a months-long trial in which he was found guilty of organising riots and inciting social hatred, according to state media.
A charismatic activist, Tikhanovsky, coined a new insult for Lukashenko when he called him a "cockroach" and his campaign slogan was "Stop the cockroach."
His supporters waved slippers —- often used to kill the insects -- at protests.
Tikhanovskaya wrote on Facebook that she thought the message about her husband's death could be "another attempt by the regime to put pressure not only on political prisoners... but also on their families".
"I worry about Siarhei every day. It is very difficult to live when you do not know if your husband is dead or not," she wrote.
Tikhanovskaya now lives in exile in neighbouring Lithuania and has been sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison.