Three political prisoners, including one American, were released from custody in Belarus on February 12.
This was reported by White House press secretary Caroline Levitt, Reuters reports.
Radio Liberty writes that among those released by Belarus was one of their journalists Andriy Kuznechyk from the networkʼs Belarusian service. He was detained on November 25, 2021, after four unknown secret service agents followed him to his home.
First, he was arrested several times on charges of hooliganism, later charged with creating an extremist organization, and in June 2022, sentenced to six years in a maximum-security prison.
Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said that activist Olena Movshuk had also been released. Her health condition is serious.
Movshuk was detained on August 10, 2020, in Pinsk as part of a criminal case involving mass riots following protests against the rigged presidential election that Alexander Lukashenko “won”. She was sentenced to six years in a general-regime colony and later deprived of parental rights to her three children.
The name of the third person released remains unknown, the White House only confirmed that he is a US citizen.
Reuters sources say another American remains imprisoned in Belarus, 47-year-old Texan Yuras Zyankovych. He was detained in April 2021 while dining in Moscow, then transferred to Belarus, where he was secretly tried and imprisoned for allegedly plotting a coup.
- On February 11, Russia released former US embassy employee Mark Vogel. He was sentenced to 14 years in a maximum-security prison in Russia for drug smuggling. In return, the United States released Russian Alexander Vinnik, who was arrested in Greece in 2017 and extradited to France and then to the United States on charges of fraud and money laundering.
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