Radio Free Europe journalist sentenced to six years in prison in Belarus

On June 8, Andrej Kuzniechik, a journalist with the Belarusian Radio Free Europe (RSE) service, was sentenced to six years in prison under strict security on charges of creating or being part of an extremist organization.

Kuzniechik, a 43-year-old father of two, was first arrested on November 25, 2021, while riding a bicycle near his home in Minsk, and has been in custody since then.

After serving two consecutive 10-day administrative sentences for "hooliganism," Belarusian authorities opened criminal proceedings against him on unspecified charges on December 23, 2021, the day the Ministry of Internal Affairs added the Belarusian Service of RSE to its register of extremist organizations.

The charges against Kuzniečik remained unknown until the end of May 2022, due to a court order banning comment on the case.

According to the members of his family, the regional court in Mogilev took only a few hours to handle this case on June 8 before it sentenced the journalist to six years in prison.

The president and CEO of RSE, Jamie Fly, said that the journalist of the house he runs was "convicted on ridiculous charges in a trial behind closed doors, which ended in a few hours."

"It is significant that the charges against him only appeared at the end of May, more than six months after he was first arrested. We demand Andrey's immediate release," underlined Flaj.

Kuzniečik is one of three RSE journalists who are currently imprisoned in Belarus.

On May 10, the court in Minsk rejected Aleh Hruzdžilović's appeal and confirmed the sentence of 18 months in a maximum security prison.

The Supreme Court of Belarus heard Ihar Losik's appeal on May 31, rejecting it the next day and upholding his 15-year sentence.

The Belarusian service of RSE, known locally as Radio Sloboda, with a monthly average of over 33 million visits to its websites and 59 million page views, was first established in 1954 and is the leading news provider in one of the most restrictive societies in Europe, defying the government's virtual monopoly on domestic electronic media.