Ihar Karnei faces another year in prison, endures prolonged isolation in correctional facility

Ihar Karnei, a jour­nal­ist sen­tenced to three years in prison, is cur­rent­ly serv­ing his sen­tence at Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty No. 17 in Shk­lou. He is held in the Secure Hous­ing Unit most of the time. Karnei’s new tri­al is sched­uled for Decem­ber 11. He is accused of per­sis­tent dis­obe­di­ence to the demands of the prison admin­is­tra­tion.

Ihar Karnei in court. March 19, 2024. Screen­shot of the CTV video

What happened to the journalist?

Ihar Karnei was trans­ferred to Shk­lou prison in June of this year. Fol­low­ing the manda­to­ry quar­an­tine peri­od, on July 2, he was reas­signed to his unit and per­mit­ted to con­tact his fam­i­ly. How­ev­er, he was sub­se­quent­ly trans­ferred to a pun­ish­ment cell for five days.

He was nev­er per­mit­ted to return to the gen­er­al unit. Instead, he was sent to the Secure Hous­ing Unit, which is also a dis­ci­pli­nary mea­sure. Ihar was iso­lat­ed for a peri­od ini­tial­ly sched­uled to end in August. How­ev­er, this dis­ci­pli­nary mea­sure was extend­ed for an addi­tion­al six months. The jour­nal­ist is sup­posed to com­plete his SHU time at the end of Jan­u­ary 2025.

Mean­while, it was revealed that Ihar Karnei will be tried in a new crim­i­nal case on Decem­ber 11. The charges against him are per­sis­tent dis­obe­di­ence to the demands of the prison admin­is­tra­tion. Judge Ali­ak­san­dr Tarakanau of the Shk­lou Dis­trict Court will hear the case.

The spe­cif­ic demands of the admin­is­tra­tion that the jour­nal­ist, who has been iso­lat­ed from the out­side world for almost six months, is alleged to have dis­obeyed are unknown. He is banned from mak­ing phone calls, and the prison admin­is­tra­tion returned the par­cel con­tain­ing warm clothes sent by his fam­i­ly.

Secure Hous­ing Unit. Pho­to: Vias­na

Human rights activists say that a crim­i­nal case can be ini­ti­at­ed if an inmate had four rep­ri­mands or three penal­ties in the facil­i­ty, one of which is the with­hold­ing of the fol­low­ing care pack­age or the with­hold­ing of anoth­er long-term or short-term fam­i­ly vis­it; or two penal­ties, one of which is the place­ment of the con­vict­ed per­son in a pun­ish­ment cell.

Under Arti­cle 411(1) of the Crim­i­nal Code, pris­on­ers may be sen­tenced to an addi­tion­al term of impris­on­ment of up to one year.

Tri­als under this arti­cle are typ­i­cal­ly con­duct­ed on the facility’s premis­es, with prison staff serv­ing as wit­ness­es. In recent years, the court has not ruled in favor of a polit­i­cal pris­on­er in such cas­es.

The case of Ihar Karnei

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.