«Espionage». Supreme Court changed wording in Katsiaryna Andreyeva’s case while uphelding the verdict

The Supreme Court of Belarus con­sid­ered the appeal of Kat­siary­na Andreyeva’s lawyers and upheld her sen­tence.

There­fore, with no demo­c­ra­t­ic changes in the coun­try, the jour­nal­ist must serve 8 years and 3 months behind bars.

How­ev­er, Ihar Ilyash, the hus­band of the con­vict­ed, informed that the Supreme Court cor­rect­ed the word­ing of the indict­ment.

Instead of “dis­clos­ing state secrets to a for­eign orga­ni­za­tion or a for­eign state,” the jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ty of Kat­siary­na Andreye­va has been reword­ed as “espi­onage”.

Nev­er­the­less, the crim­i­nal arti­cle has not been changed and the new def­i­n­i­tion did not influ­ence the out­come for the jour­nal­ist, who is now prepar­ing to be trans­ferred to a cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty.

On 13 July 2022, the Homel Region­al Court sen­tenced Bel­sat TV chan­nel cor­re­spon­dent Kat­siary­na Andreye­va to 8 years and 3 months in prison based on “new find­ings.”

Ear­li­er, she was sen­tenced to two years of impris­on­ment for stream­ing a protest of com­mem­o­ra­tion of the mur­dered activist Raman Ban­daren­ka in Novem­ber 2020.

Kat­siary­na and video­g­ra­ph­er Darya Chultso­va were accused of alleged­ly “coor­di­nat­ing the actions of the pro­test­ers.” On 18 Feb­ru­ary 2021, the Frun­zen­s­ki Dis­trict Court of Min­sk sen­tenced the defen­dants to two years of impris­on­ment. Darya Chultso­va was released in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber this year.

Human rights activists rec­og­nized the jour­nal­ists as polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.