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  • Defendants in BelaPAN case sentenced to 4 to 14 years of prison

    On 6 October, the Minsk Regional Court announced the sentences for the four defendants in the case of the BelaPAN independent news agency. Political prisoners will have to spend the next few years behind bars.

    Since the hear­ings were held in cam­era and the tri­al par­tic­i­pants signed a non-dis­clo­sure state­ment, the essence of the accu­sa­tion is not known in detail. No pub­lic was not allowed in the court­room to hear the ver­dict. Here are the announced sen­tences:

    Iry­na Leushy­na (Bela­PAN edi­tor-in-chief) – four years in prison.

    Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau (for­mer Bela­PAN CEO) – 6 years in prison.

    Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau (for­mer Bela­PAN deputy direc­tor) – 14 years in prison.

    Iry­na Zlobi­na (soci­ol­o­gist, pub­lic fig­ure) – 9 years in prison.

    Human rights activists declared all defen­dants in the Bela­PAN case polit­i­cal pris­on­ers. Dur­ing the tri­al, none of them plead­ed guilty to any­thing.

    Iry­na Leushy­na and Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau were detained on 18 August 2021, Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau and Iry­na Zlobi­na were kept behind bars since 12 Jan­u­ary 2021. Their cas­es were inter­twined in dif­fer­ent vari­a­tions.

    Ali­ak­san­drau, Leushy­na, and Navazhy­lau were charged with “estab­lish­ment of an extrem­ist for­ma­tion,” although all of them had been detained long before the KGB issued a res­o­lu­tion of 1 Novem­ber 2021 rec­og­niz­ing Bela­PAN as such a “for­ma­tion.”

    Ali­ak­san­drau and Zlobi­na were ini­tial­ly pros­e­cut­ed under the crim­i­nal arti­cle “facil­i­tat­ing people’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in mass riots” (by pay­ing fines giv­en to peace­ful protest par­tic­i­pants). Lat­er they were also charged with “high trea­son.”

    Ali­ak­san­drau and Navazhy­lau were sus­pect­ed of tax eva­sion of 200 thou­sand dol­lars.

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