Journalist Ihar Karnei sentenced to eight more months in prison

On Decem­ber 13, the Shk­lou Dis­trict Court found jour­nal­ist and polit­i­cal pris­on­er Ihar Karnei guilty of per­sis­tent dis­obe­di­ence to the demands of the prison admin­is­tra­tion. Judge Ali­ak­san­dr Tarakanau sen­tenced the jour­nal­ist to an addi­tion­al 8 months in prison.

Ihar Karnei. Pho­to: RFE/RL Belarus

Tak­ing into account this new sen­tence, the jour­nal­ist will be released in Octo­ber 2026 instead of ear­ly Feb­ru­ary 2026.

As this is the sec­ond con­vic­tion in the crim­i­nal case, there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty that Ihar Karnei’s secu­ri­ty lev­el will be increased.

He was trans­ferred to Shk­lou Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty No. 17 to serve his sen­tence for alleged «par­tic­i­pa­tion in an extrem­ist for­ma­tion».

In total, Ihar Karnei has been in prison for almost a year and a half. The jour­nal­ist was arrest­ed on July 17, 2023 after a search of his apart­ment.

Ihar Karnei was charged with par­tic­i­pat­ing in an extrem­ist for­ma­tion. State media report­ed that Karnei had alleged­ly coop­er­at­ed with the “extrem­ist” orga­ni­za­tion Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, which the KGB had rec­og­nized as an “extrem­ist for­ma­tion” in Feb­ru­ary 2023. The rea­son giv­en was ide­o­log­i­cal and polit­i­cal hos­til­i­ty.

On March 25, 2024, the Belaru­sian human rights com­mu­ni­ty rec­og­nized Ihar Karnei as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er.

Karnei’s ver­dict was announced in the Min­sk City Court on March 22, 2024. Judge Siarhei Kat­sar sen­tenced the jour­nal­ist to three years’ impris­on­ment and a fine of $6,000.

Ihar Karnei’s attempt to appeal the sen­tence was unsuc­cess­ful. On June 7, 2024, a pan­el of the Supreme Court, chaired by Judge Ali­ak­san­dr Sauchuk, reject­ed his appeal. A few days lat­er, the jour­nal­ist was includ­ed in the list of “extrem­ists” on the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs web­site and was soon sent to the Shk­lou cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty, where he was imme­di­ate­ly sub­ject­ed to pres­sure from the admin­is­tra­tion.

On Jan­u­ary 1, Ihar Karnei will turn 57. He has been work­ing in jour­nal­ism since his stu­dent years. In the late 1980s, he co-found­ed an inde­pen­dent youth news­pa­per Lid­er in Orsha with friends and like-mind­ed indi­vid­u­als. He also con­tributed to Znamya Yunos­ti, Kras­naya Sme­na, and Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da news­pa­pers. From 1991, he worked for Zvyaz­da news­pa­per.

Between 1994 and 2000, he was a cor­re­spon­dent for the week­ly Svo­bod­nye Novosti. In 2000, he joined the RFE/RL Belarus office. Recent­ly, he has been work­ing as a free­lance jour­nal­ist.

In the last few years, he has become inter­est­ed in local his­to­ry and blog­ging. He has writ­ten arti­cles for the local his­to­ry web­site Kreva.Travel.