Belarus dissident fears ‘torture and death’ if extradited from Serbia

Arrest of opposition filmmaker Andrey Gnyot is seen as a test for Belgrade’s allegiances

A year after being arrested in Serbia, a prominent Belarusian dissident still lives in fear he could be extradited to his home country where he is convinced he faces torture — or even death.

Andrey Gnyot’s plight highlights not just the dire prospects for opponents of Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko, a steadfast Moscow ally, but also the tightrope Serbia’s leadership is walking between western rapprochement and historic loyalty to Russia.

“Twenty-five political prisoners have died in Belarus since 2020,” Gnyot told the Financial Times from his house arrest in a Belgrade flat overlooking a brick wall. “Torture and death await me there, 100 per cent.”

Lukashenko has been in power for 30 years and has now incarcerated some 1,300 political opponents, according to the human rights group Viasna.

The 42-year-old was arrested at Belgrade airport last year based on an international arrest warrant Minsk had requested for tax evasion charges. He had been living in Thailand since 2021, where he fled after being invited to be interviewed by the Belarusian security service, which still bears the Soviet name, KGB.

He spoke to the FT shortly after Serbia’s appeals court sent his extradition case back to the higher court of Belgrade for a third time, extending his painful limbo.

European actors and filmmakers including Juliette Binoche, Agnieszka Holland and Wim Wenders in August sent an open letter to the Serbian authorities asking them not to extradite Gnyot.

“For Serbia it’s a difficult case of how to save face and keep good relations with those who back Russia and at the same time keep its EU integration plan going,” said Franak Viačorka, senior adviser to the exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

“There’s been a lot of pressure from Brussels, including from [European Commission President] Ursula von der Leyen, and I think that any extradition decision would be a serious blow to the relationship with Brussels.”

Gnyot said he fell foul of the regime mainly because he helped dissident athletes in their response to Lukashenko’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests after his 2020 re-election. The athletes sent an open letter to the International Olympic Committee demanding an investigation into harassment by the regime and asking the IOC to suspend Minsk.

Gnyot’s association also contributed to the removal of Minsk as co-host of the 2021 ice hockey world championships, which was eventually held only in Latvia.

The Belarusian regime claims to want to sentence him for tax evasion, but it has previously condemned his work and activism against Lukashenko.

Gnyot said that he felt safe and far enough from Belarus to travel to Serbia a year ago for a film project.

“Instead of shooting a film for clients in Romania and Sweden, I was detained right at the airport,” he recalled. “They put me in a room with dozens of people from all over the world, crammed with barely a place to stand, no water or food or toilet break.”

When he told the Belgrade court that tax evasion, “paragraph 243”, was used by the Belarusian dictatorship to lock up its enemies, Gnyot recalled the judge saying: “Dictatorship in Belarus? This is the first I ever heard of that in my life. Do you have any evidence?”

But Viačorka from the Belarus opposition said that the arrest should also raise questions over how Interpol could sometimes help authoritarian regimes.

“Every country can send a red notice to the international database, but it’s a very weird situation when you have Interpol basically working on behalf of dictatorships to detain those whom dictators don’t like,” he said.

/www.ft.com