Defendants in BelaPAN case sentenced to 4 to 14 years of prison

Since the hear­ings were held in cam­era and the tri­al par­tic­i­pants signed a non-dis­clo­sure state­ment, the essence of the accu­sa­tion is not known in detail. No pub­lic was not allowed in the court­room to hear the ver­dict. Here are the announced sen­tences:

Iry­na Leushy­na (Bela­PAN edi­tor-in-chief) – four years in prison.

Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau (for­mer Bela­PAN CEO) – 6 years in prison.

Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau (for­mer Bela­PAN deputy direc­tor) – 14 years in prison.

Iry­na Zlobi­na (soci­ol­o­gist, pub­lic fig­ure) – 9 years in prison.

Human rights activists declared all defen­dants in the Bela­PAN case polit­i­cal pris­on­ers. Dur­ing the tri­al, none of them plead­ed guilty to any­thing.

Iry­na Leushy­na and Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau were detained on 18 August 2021, Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau and Iry­na Zlobi­na were kept behind bars since 12 Jan­u­ary 2021. Their cas­es were inter­twined in dif­fer­ent vari­a­tions.

Ali­ak­san­drau, Leushy­na, and Navazhy­lau were charged with “estab­lish­ment of an extrem­ist for­ma­tion,” although all of them had been detained long before the KGB issued a res­o­lu­tion of 1 Novem­ber 2021 rec­og­niz­ing Bela­PAN as such a “for­ma­tion.”

Ali­ak­san­drau and Zlobi­na were ini­tial­ly pros­e­cut­ed under the crim­i­nal arti­cle “facil­i­tat­ing people’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in mass riots” (by pay­ing fines giv­en to peace­ful protest par­tic­i­pants). Lat­er they were also charged with “high trea­son.”

Ali­ak­san­drau and Navazhy­lau were sus­pect­ed of tax eva­sion of 200 thou­sand dol­lars.