Ten years of imprisonment: Supreme Court dismisses Aliaksandr Fiaduta’s appeal

Ali­ak­san­dr Fiadu­ta was detained in Moscow on 12 April 2021 and charged with con­spir­a­cy to seize state pow­er by uncon­sti­tu­tion­al means. The accu­sa­tion was fur­ther expand­ed to crimes such as the orga­ni­za­tion of actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order, incite­ment of social enmi­ty, and encour­ag­ing sanc­tions aimed at harm­ing the nation­al secu­ri­ty of Belarus.

Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka con­firmed the deten­tion of “a crim­i­nal group of Belaru­sians and for­eign­ers” who had alleged­ly been prepar­ing attempts on him and his three sons. In addi­tion to the phys­i­cal elim­i­na­tion of the “Belaru­sian leader,” the “intrud­ers, sup­port­ed by U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies,” seem to have been plan­ning an armed mutiny to seize pow­er by force.

On 5 Sep­tem­ber 2022, Judge of Min­sk Region­al Court Uladz­imir Aresh­ka pro­nounced the sen­tence in the high-pro­file case. The accused colum­nist Ali­ak­san­dr Fiadu­ta and politi­cian Ryhor Ryhor Kas­tusy­ou were sen­tenced to 10 years in prison each, lawyer Yury Ziankovich – to 11 years, accoun­tant Vol­ha Halubovich and pub­lic fig­ure Dzia­n­is Krauchuk – to 2.5 years, respec­tive­ly.

It is the sec­ond time that Ali­ak­san­dr Fiadu­ta has become a polit­i­cal pris­on­er. He was also arrest­ed dur­ing the 2010 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign and sen­tenced to 2 years of sus­pend­ed impris­on­ment with a pro­ba­tion peri­od of 2 years.

The cur­rent stay in prison sig­nif­i­cant­ly under­mined the phys­i­cal con­di­tion of the 58-year-old polit­i­cal pris­on­er: he was diag­nosed with heart fail­ure and suf­fered an attack of angi­na and arrhyth­mia. Despite this, a year ago, he went on a “med­ical strike” – he refused to take heart med­ica­tion, protest­ing against the cor­re­spon­dence ban and the con­fis­ca­tion of his lit­er­ary man­u­script. As a result, the jail admin­is­tra­tion had to meet him halfway.