Journalist Andrej Aliaksandraŭ charged with high treason

The news of the charge has left Mr. Ali­ak­san­draŭ “shocked,” accord­ing to the lawyer. The jour­nal­ist denies the charge.

Mr. Ali­ak­san­draŭ, who has been in cus­tody since this past Jan­u­ary, was ear­li­er charged with orga­niz­ing and prepar­ing actions gross­ly dis­turb­ing pub­lic order. A per­son charged with the crime may not be held in cus­tody pend­ing tri­al for more than six months, mean­ing that the jour­nal­ist should have been released next month if it were not for the fresh charge.

Mr. Hašyn­s­ki said that his client was in fair­ly good health, using his right to reg­u­lar open-air walks and read­ing books. Many let­ters sent to Mr. Ali­ak­san­draŭ are deliv­ered to him after much delay or nev­er reach him at all, said the lawyer.

Mr. Ali­ak­san­draŭ and his girl­friend, Iry­na Zlobi­na, were arrest­ed on Jan­u­ary 12 on sus­pi­cion of financ­ing anti-gov­ern­ment protests. Accord­ing to the inte­ri­or min­istry, they pro­vid­ed pro­test­ers with mon­ey to pay court-imposed fines, using mon­ey brought to Belarus from abroad for this pur­pose.

Crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings were insti­tut­ed against the pair under Part Two of the Crim­i­nal Code’s Arti­cle 342, which penal­izes the train­ing and financ­ing of peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ing in group actions gross­ly dis­turb­ing pub­lic order.

On Jan­u­ary 14, police offi­cers con­duct­ed a three-hour search at BelaPAN’s office in Min­sk with­in the frame­work of the inquiry against Mr. Ali­ak­san­draŭ, who was BelaPAN’s deputy direc­tor gen­er­al from 2014 to 2018. Com­put­er hard dri­ves, doc­u­ments and hand­writ­ten notes were seized.

On April 12, the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee of Belarus announced that it had insti­tut­ed crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against Ali­ak­siej Liavončyk and Andrej Stryžak, the two founders of a crowd­fund­ing plat­form called By_Help, who are accused of pro­vid­ing funds to Mr. Ali­ak­san­draŭ and Ms. Zlobi­na “to be sub­se­quent­ly used in their crim­i­nal activ­i­ties”.

Human rights defend­ers argue that pay­ing fines can­not be viewed as financ­ing group actions gross­ly dis­turb­ing pub­lic order.

“Ali­ak­san­draŭ was in fact engaged in a char­i­ta­ble activ­i­ty because peo­ple – Belaru­sian res­i­dents and Belaru­sians liv­ing abroad – raised the mon­ey in order to help oth­ers. This is a legal activ­i­ty, and even the tax author­i­ties could hold noth­ing against it,” Valiancin Ste­fanovič, deputy chair­per­son of the unreg­is­tered Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, told Bela­PAN.

Mr. Ste­fanovič con­demned the charge against Mr. Ali­ak­san­draŭ as “absolute­ly unfound­ed” and linked it to his pub­lic and human rights activ­i­ties.

Mr. Ali­ak­san­draŭ and Ms. Zlobi­na have been placed on the Belaru­sian author­i­ties’ list of indi­vid­u­als “prone to extrem­ism”.

Belaru­sian human rights orga­ni­za­tions have declared them polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.

—
Found­ed in 1991, the Bela­PAN News Agency is an inde­pen­dent source of infor­ma­tion about events in Belarus. Bela­PAN pro­vides not only time­ly news reports, but also ana­lyt­i­cal sto­ries on major issues.