Court announces liquidation of BelaPAN

The prosecutor’s office of the Per­shamais­ki Dis­trict of Min­sk filed a claim for liq­ui­da­tion of Bela­PAN. The eco­nom­ic court sat­is­fied it. The deci­sion has already come into force.

Bela­PAN was found­ed by Ales Lipai in 1991. It was the first inde­pen­dent news agency in Belarus. On Jan­u­ary 14, 2021, law enforcers searched the edi­to­r­i­al office. On August 18, the search was repeat­ed: this time not only in the office, but also in the jour­nal­ists’ homes. Sev­er­al peo­ple were arrest­ed. The web­sites belapan.by, belapan.com, naviny.by stopped work­ing.

On Octo­ber 6, 2022 at a closed ses­sion the Min­sk Region­al Court announced the ver­dict to the defen­dants in the Bela­PAN case. The tri­al was held behind closed doors and the attor­neys signed a non-dis­clo­sure state­ment, so the details are unknown. Judge Viachaslau Tulei­ka only pub­licly announced his deci­sion:

• Iry­na Leushy­na, Bela­PAN edi­tor-in-chief – 4 years in prison.
• Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau, for­mer gen­er­al direc­tor of Bela­PAN – 6 years in prison.
• Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau, for­mer deputy direc­tor of Bela­PAN – 14 years in prison.
• Iry­na Zlobi­na, soci­ol­o­gist, social activist – 9 years in prison.

In addi­tion, most of them received heavy fines rang­ing from $7,000 to $10,000.