Journalist Aleh Hruzdzilovich sentenced to 1.5 years in prison

His tri­al began yes­ter­day. The for­mer RFE/RL jour­nal­ist was accused of par­tic­i­pa­tion in three dif­fer­ent protest march­es against the elec­toral fraud in 2020 (Art. 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code — Organ­i­sa­tion and prepa­ra­tion of actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order, or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them). The pros­e­cu­tor request­ed 1.5 years of impris­on­ment for the jour­nal­ist.

Hruzdzilovich was also sued for 56,000 rubles.

The jour­nal­ist tes­ti­fied in court yes­ter­day on each count: where he was and what he did on the dates spec­i­fied in the charge. Aleh relat­ed that on 16 August 2020, he was accred­it­ed by the Belaru­sian For­eign Min­istry as RFE/RL Belarus cor­re­spon­dent and wore a Press vest. On 11 and 18 Octo­ber, he worked as a free­lance jour­nal­ist of Nar­o­d­naya Volya, since in August that year, his accred­i­ta­tion, as well as accred­i­ta­tion of oth­er RFE/RL jour­nal­ists, was can­celled by the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs.

Iosif Syaredzich, the edi­tor-in-chief of Nar­o­d­naya Volya, tes­ti­fied at the tri­al yes­ter­day. He told the court that Aleh was car­ry­ing out an edi­to­r­i­al assign­ment to cov­er the events.

Aleh Hruzdzilovich is one of the most famous Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists, with some 40 years of expe­ri­ence.