December 9, Pozirk. Iryna Leŭšyna, a former BelaPAN CEO and editor in chief, was released on December 7, the Viasna Human Rights Center reported. She has served her sentence in full.
Authorities arrested Leŭšyna and the previous CEO, Dźmitryj Navažyłaŭ, in August 2021.
The Minsk Regional Court sentenced the two, as well as former deputy CEO Andrej Alaksandraŭ and his wife Iryna Złobina, to prison in October 2022. Alaksandraŭ and Złobina had been in custody since January 2021.
Leŭšyna was given four years for allegedly uniting BelaPAN journalists into an “extremist group.” In her closing argument, she dismissed the accusation as nonsense.
“Somebody has clearly confused cause and effect and decided to blame journalists for the unrest that took place in our country in 2020. But we did not call for it or distort the facts, we did not make anything up. Reality was stranger than fiction,” she said.
In January 2023, the Supreme Court rejected Leŭšyna’s appeal. She served her sentence in Homiel, working in a sewing shop at women’s penal colony.
The BelaPAN media company was founded in 1991 and dissolved in 2024, after an attack by security forces. Human rights groups designated Leŭšyna, Navažyłaŭ, Alaksandraŭ and Złobina as political prisoners.
