Ex-journalist and political prisoner Siarhei Hardziyevich redetained

Siarhei Hardziye­vich worked for the Pier­shy Rehi­jon online pub­li­ca­tion until his deten­tion in late 2020. He was charged with insult­ing a pub­lic offi­cer, dis­sem­i­nat­ing false and humil­i­at­ing infor­ma­tion (slan­der) that con­tained accu­sa­tions of com­mit­ting a seri­ous crime, and pub­licly insult­ing the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus.

Before the tri­al, Siarhei Hardziye­vich was under house arrest. On 2 August 2021, he was sen­tenced to 1 year and 6 months of impris­on­ment, which result­ed in the human rights com­mu­ni­ty rec­og­niz­ing him as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er. The jour­nal­ist com­plet­ed the sen­tence on 27 Octo­ber 2022.

Some weeks after, he was added to the list of ‘extrem­ists’.

In Sep­tem­ber of last year, Siarhei Hardziye­vich was detained at the Brest check­point while return­ing from Poland to Belarus. At the bor­der, author­i­ties decid­ed to inspect the for­mer journalist’s cell phone and sub­se­quent­ly charged him with stor­ing ‘extrem­ist’ con­tent. As a result, Siarhei Hardziye­vich was sen­tenced to 15 days of admin­is­tra­tive deten­tion.

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