Journalist Pavel Dabravolski’s case sent to court

Polit­i­cal pris­on­er and jour­nal­ist Pavel Dabravol­s­ki is charged with “high trea­son”. He faces up to 15 years impris­on­ment.

Pavel Dabravol­s­ki in Cór­do­ba, Argenti­na. Pho­to: Insta­gram

Accord­ing to infor­ma­tion obtained by BAJ, the inves­ti­ga­tion into Pavel Dabravol­s­ki has been com­plet­ed and the crim­i­nal case has been trans­ferred to Min­sk City Court.

The tri­al is expect­ed to begin in late Feb­ru­ary.

In fall 2025, Pavel Dabravol­s­ki was trans­ferred from the KGB remand cen­ter to Remand Cen­ter No. 1 in Kali­adzichy.

Accord­ing to BAJ sources, the “high trea­son” charge is con­nect­ed to Dabravol­ski’s jour­nal­is­tic pub­li­ca­tions. He pre­vi­ous­ly worked for both Belaru­sian and for­eign media, includ­ing the Ukrain­ian mag­a­zine NV.ua (before Rus­si­a’s full-scale inva­sion). His last work­place in Belarus was the inde­pen­dent news agency Bela­PAN.

Pavel Dabravol­s­ki was detained in Min­sk on Jan­u­ary 22, 2025, sev­er­al months after return­ing to Belarus.

Pavel left Belarus in ear­ly fall 2021. Accord­ing to his social media pages, after leav­ing he trav­eled around the world: vis­it­ing sev­er­al Euro­pean coun­tries, Iran, Rus­sia, and South Amer­i­can coun­tries. He returned to Min­sk in Octo­ber 2024.

Dur­ing the 2020 post-elec­tion protests, Pavel Dabravol­s­ki was admin­is­tra­tive­ly detained in con­nec­tion with his pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties. In par­tic­u­lar, on Octo­ber 30, 2020, the jour­nal­ist was detained in his apart­ment and then sen­tenced to 15 days in deten­tion on charges of par­tic­i­pat­ing in an unau­tho­rized ral­ly.

The Belaru­sian human rights com­mu­ni­ty has rec­og­nized Pavel Dabravol­s­ki as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er.

On Jan­u­ary 12, he turned 36 behind bars.

Accord­ing to the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, 28 media work­ers are cur­rent­ly impris­oned in Belarus.