Journalist Ales Lubianchuk released: BAJ discovers why he faced a second trial

The KGB has added jour­nal­ist Ales Lubianchuk to its List of Indi­vid­u­als Con­nect­ed to Ter­ror­ist Activ­i­ties. The for­mer polit­i­cal pris­on­er is, how­ev­er, already free and out­side Belarus, BAJ has learned from its own sources.

Ales Lubianchuk. 2026. Pho­to: social media

Ales Lubianchuk was detained on Sep­tem­ber 2, 2025, by offi­cers of the Main Direc­torate for Com­bat­ing Orga­nized Crime and Cor­rup­tion of Hrod­na Region.

The sec­ond pros­e­cu­tion against Lubianchuk involved charges of “incit­ing hos­til­i­ty” through crit­i­cism of the author­i­ties and “facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ty” linked to the Belarus­ki Hajun case. The Belarus­ki Hajun project relied on pub­lic sub­mis­sions to track mil­i­tary move­ments in Belarus. After secu­ri­ty ser­vices com­pro­mised its Telegram bot and iden­ti­fied con­trib­u­tors, many of them became tar­gets of crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings.

The jour­nal­ist was held in pre-tri­al deten­tion at the Hrod­na Remand Cen­tre for the fol­low­ing sev­en months.

The tri­al in Lubianchuk’s case took place in March 2026. The pros­e­cu­tion sought a sen­tence of 4.5 years in prison. Judge Valery Shpak sen­tenced him to 4 years in prison.

How­ev­er, because the offens­es in the new case were com­mit­ted dur­ing rough­ly the same peri­od as the pre­vi­ous ones — for which the jour­nal­ist had already served his sen­tence — three years of that pre­vi­ous­ly served sen­tence were cred­it­ed toward the new one. This left one year remain­ing.

Time served in the remand cen­tre was count­ed at a rate of one and a half days per day. As a result, Lubianchuk spent only two weeks in the cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty, part of which was in quar­an­tine and part in a pun­ish­ment cell. He was nev­er trans­ferred to a gen­er­al unit, as he was released upon com­ple­tion of his sen­tence in May.

On June 22, infor­ma­tion emerged that Ales Lubianchuk had been added to the KGB’s List of Indi­vid­u­als Con­nect­ed to Ter­ror­ist Activ­i­ties. Inclu­sion on this list impos­es severe restric­tions on a per­son. The most painful con­se­quences relate to finances and the inabil­i­ty to lead a nor­mal life. All bank accounts in Belarus are auto­mat­i­cal­ly frozen, with no trans­ac­tions per­mit­ted — includ­ing receipt of wages or a pen­sion. A per­son on this list may with­draw only a lim­it­ed amount from their account ($16) per month to cov­er basic needs.

There may also be dif­fi­cul­ties with employ­ment, as employ­ers may refuse to hire such indi­vid­u­als, since com­pa­nies are pro­hib­it­ed from con­duct­ing finan­cial trans­ac­tions involv­ing them.

Ales Lubianchuk was pre­vi­ous­ly detained in May 2022 and sen­tenced to three years in a cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty on charges of “par­tic­i­pa­tion in an extrem­ist for­ma­tion”. He served his sen­tence in full at Mahilou Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty No. 15 and was released in Jan­u­ary 2025.