Journalists Yury Drakakhrust and Hanna Liubakova added to Belarusian Interior Ministry’s ‘extremist’ list and KGB’s ‘terrorist’ registry

On 25 Octo­ber, the Belaru­sian Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs web­site updat­ed its list of “per­sons involved in extrem­ist activ­i­ties.” The list was expand­ed to include the names of 20 defen­dants in the “Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya’s Ana­lysts” crim­i­nal case who were con­vict­ed in a spe­cial pro­ceed­ings tri­al. They include jour­nal­ists from the Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media, Yury Drakakhrust and Han­na Liubako­va.

Han­na Liubako­va, a defen­dant in the “Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya’s Ana­lysts” crim­i­nal case. Pho­to: Journalist’s social media

Accord­ing to Pozirk, the day before, on 24 Octo­ber, all 20 peo­ple rec­og­nized by the gov­ern­ment as mem­bers of the “extrem­ist for­ma­tion” were added to the KGB’s “ter­ror­ist list.”

All the defen­dants in the case, which tar­gets 20 inde­pen­dent ana­lysts, researchers, jour­nal­ists, and politi­cians, are cur­rent­ly resid­ing abroad. As a result, the tri­al in the Min­sk Region­al Court took place with­out their pres­ence, as did the con­sid­er­a­tion of appeals in the Supreme Court.

All indi­vid­u­als asso­ci­at­ed with the extrem­ist for­ma­tion were found guilty of the fol­low­ing offens­es:

• con­spir­a­cy to seize state pow­er through uncon­sti­tu­tion­al means;
• join­ing an extrem­ist for­ma­tion to com­mit an extrem­ist crime;
• aid­ing and abet­ting pub­lic calls for actions aimed at harm­ing the nation­al secu­ri­ty of the Repub­lic of Belarus;
• facil­i­tat­ing delib­er­ate acts aimed at incit­ing social hatred and dis­cord based on social affil­i­a­tion by a group of per­sons.

One of the defen­dants, Ali­ak­san­dr Dabravol­s­ki, was addi­tion­al­ly found guilty of lead­ing an extrem­ist for­ma­tion and its sub­di­vi­sion.

The fol­low­ing sen­tences were imposed on the accused for the total­i­ty of the crimes com­mit­ted:

Ali­ak­san­dr Dabravol­s­ki – 11 years and 6 months of impris­on­ment and a fine of $73,350;

Han­na Kra­suli­na, Dzia­n­is Kuchyn­s­ki, Piotr Rud­k­ous­ki, Ali­ak­san­dr Shlyk – 11 years in prison and fines rang­ing from $12,250 to $490,000;

Han­na Liubako­va, Yury Drakakhrust, Ryhor Astape­nia, Fil­ip Bikanau, Andrei Kaza­ke­vich, Yauhen Kryzhanous­ki, Verani­ka Laput­ska, Ali­ak­san­dr Lahvinets, Vasil Navu­mau, Maria Roha­va, Ale­sia Rud­nik, Natal­lia Raba­va, Tat­siana Chulit­skaya, Kat­siary­na Shmatsi­na – 10 years in prison;

Pavel Usau – 11 years in prison.

The sen­tence was pro­nounced on 1 July 2024. On 8 Octo­ber, after con­sid­er­ing the con­victs’ appeals, the Supreme Court dis­missed them, and the ver­dict of the Min­sk Region­al Court remained unchanged.