Imprisoned journalist Dzmitry Navazhylau remains behind bars

Human rights defend­ers report “con­fu­sion” in the lists of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers released on March 19 with U.S. assis­tance. BAJ notes that ini­tial­ly, the par­don release list includ­ed the pre­cise per­son­al details of for­mer Bela­PAN news agency direc­tor Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau.

For­mer Bela­PAN direc­tor Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau. File video: tut.by / frame cap­ture: Pozirk

Accord­ing to human rights defend­ers, a dif­fer­ent per­son with a some­what sim­i­lar sur­name was released instead. As the Vias­na / Pravy chalave­ka u Belarusi Telegram chan­nel reports, among the 250 polit­i­cal pris­on­ers released with the assis­tance of U.S. spe­cial envoy John Coale was Uladzis­lau Navazhantsau, a res­i­dent of the Homel Region.

How­ev­er, the orig­i­nal release list con­tained the per­son­al data specif­i­cal­ly of Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau. Nei­ther the name and sur­name nor the date of birth match the released pris­on­er. Why this hap­pened is unknown.

Either way, Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau still remains behind bars.

The for­mer direc­tor of the Bela­PAN news agency was sen­tenced to 6 years impris­on­ment. The media man­ag­er was charged with cre­at­ing an extrem­ist for­ma­tion or par­tic­i­pat­ing in it and tax eva­sion.

The BelaPAN case

The tri­al of Bela­PAN employ­ees began on June 6, 2022, then a recess was announced for “expert exam­i­na­tion,” and resumed at the end of Sep­tem­ber until the final hear­ing.

Secu­ri­ty forces came with search­es to Iry­na Leushy­na, Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau, and sev­er­al oth­er cur­rent and for­mer Bela­PAN employ­ees on August 18, 2021. A search also took place at the news agen­cy’s Min­sk office. Secu­ri­ty forces seized near­ly fifty pieces of equip­ment: servers, lap­tops, hard dri­ves, account­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion, etc.

Iry­na Leushy­na and Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau were ini­tial­ly detained under Arti­cle 342 for alleged­ly orga­niz­ing actions that dis­rupt pub­lic order. The charges were lat­er changed to large-scale tax eva­sion, and an addi­tion­al count — cre­at­ing or par­tic­i­pat­ing in an extrem­ist for­ma­tion — was added.

Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau and Iry­na Zlobi­na had been behind bars much ear­li­er, since Jan­u­ary 12, 2021. For­mal­ly they were detained for “enabling oth­er indi­vid­u­als to par­tic­i­pate in riots.” The basis was pay­ment of admin­is­tra­tive fines imposed for par­tic­i­pa­tion in protests.

Soon the cas­es of the four defen­dants became inter­twined in var­i­ous com­bi­na­tions. Jour­nal­ists Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau, Iry­na Leushy­na, and Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau were charged with “cre­at­ing and oper­at­ing an extrem­ist for­ma­tion,” although all were detained before the rel­e­vant deci­sion by the State Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee. Bela­PAN was des­ig­nat­ed an “extrem­ist for­ma­tion” by the KGB more than two months after the deten­tion of Leushy­na and Navazhy­lau — on Novem­ber 1, 2021.

For Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau and Iry­na Zlobi­na, the crim­i­nal arti­cle for “financ­ing protests” was sup­ple­ment­ed behind bars with “high trea­son.” Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau and Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau were grouped and list­ed as sus­pect­ed of non-pay­ment of tax­es amount­ing to $200,000. The penal­ties of all arti­cles were used as the basis for cal­cu­lat­ing the final terms of impris­on­ment.

Dur­ing the tri­al, none of the defen­dants admit­ted guilt in any­thing, and human rights defend­ers declared them all polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.