Intex-press journalist Yury Hantsarevich sentenced to 2.5 years in jail

The case was con­sid­ered in Brest by the Region­al Judi­cial Board chaired by Mikalai Hry­harovich.

Hantsare­vich plead­ed guilty and moti­vat­ed his actions by «the will­ing­ness to prove it was Russ­ian planes that flew towards Ukraine, and that Belarus was not involved in hos­til­i­ties,» explains Intex-press.

Yury Hantsare­vich was detained on April 27; at first he was sen­tenced to 10 days of admin­is­tra­tive deten­tion. But a week lat­er, pro-gov­ern­ment Telegram chan­nels pub­lished a frag­ment of a video of his inter­ro­ga­tion and details of his deten­tion: the jour­nal­ist was alleged­ly tak­ing pic­tures of Russ­ian mil­i­tary equip­ment and send­ing them to the media rec­og­nized as extrem­ist by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties. 

On May 6 Hantsare­vich was charged with facil­i­ta­tion of extrem­ist activ­i­ty.