The Supreme Court of Belarus announced on Friday (May 26th) that it had rejected the appeal of a Belarusian journalist, Andrzej Poczobut, a member of the Polish minority in this former Soviet republic, who had been sentenced in February to eight years in prison.
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The verdict ... was left unchanged, the appeal having been rejected," the Supreme Court said in a statement. Therefore, "the verdict has come into effect," she added.
'Personal revenge'
Andrzej Poczobut, 50, a correspondent in Belarus for Polish media outlet Gazeta Wyborcza and an activist for the rights of the Polish minority, was convicted in February of "public calls for actions aimed at harming the national security" of the country and "incitement to hatred". The journalist, whose trial took place behind closed doors at the regional court in Grodno (west), home to a large community of Polish origin, was sentenced to eight years in a harsh prison camp.
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Poland had denounced an "unjust" verdict pronounced by an "authoritarian country" against this journalist, who was prosecuted for having called for international sanctions against Belarus. For her part, the leader of the Belarusian opposition in exile, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, had denounced a "personal revenge" of the authoritarian Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko against Andrzej Poczobut, imprisoned since his arrest in March 2021. The regime of Alexander Lukashenko is carrying out a relentless crackdown on all critical voices, especially since an unprecedented protest movement in 2020.
