Once again, a court in the Serbian capital Belgrade will decide the fate of Andrey Gnyot – his last hope. The judges in Gnyot’s case are currently considering his appeal against an earlier Serbian ruling that calls for the Belarusian activist to be extradited to Minsk. He has spent most of the last ten months in a Serbian prison.
According to court documents, Belarusian authorities want Gnyot to answer the tax evasion allegations. But Gnyot’s lawyers say he is being persecuted because of his past political activities against dictator Alexander Lukashenko. Gnyot took part in numerous protests accusing Lukashenko of electoral fraud in the summer of 2020.
Arrested in Serbia on the basis of an INTERPOL arrest warrant
Andrey Gnyot is a director, journalist and activist. He makes television commercials and music videos. Since fleeing Belarus, he has lived in Thailand. He was arrested on October 30, 2023, when he arrived in Belgrade from Bangkok.
“This was my second trip, I was in Serbia for a short time in August to film. I was arrested at passport control, then taken to the police and informed that I was wanted by an INTERPOL arrest warrant – at the request of the INTERPOL office in Belarus,” Gnyot told DW.
At the time, he learned that the authorities in Belarus accused him of withholding around 300,000 euros in taxes. Gnyot says the charges against him are politically motivated. After his arrest, Gnyot revealed that he was one of the founders of the Belarusian Free Athletes Association SOS-BY, an initiative launched after the controversial 2020 presidential election.
The group was able to influence the decision to deprive Belarus of the right to host the 2021 Ice Hockey World Championship. It was also instrumental in cutting funding for the National Olympic Committee of Belarus. In 2022, the Belarusian authorities declared SOS-BY an “extremist organization.”
Prison, house arrest and electronic ankle bracelets
Andrey Gnyot was immediately taken to Belgrade’s main prison after his arrest. After about a month and a half in custody, Serbian authorities decided that Gnyot could be extradited to Belarus. “In mid-December 2023, I received a piece of paper saying that Serbia considered my extradition possible and saw no reason not to hand me over,” he said. “Of course, that was a shock for me.”
However, in March 2024, an appeals court stayed the verdict on the grounds that there had been procedural errors: the court found that not all aspects of the case had been clarified and noted that Gnyot had not been given an opportunity to testify. The case went back to the court for a retrial.
A new appeal and a lot of nervous waiting
On June 6, 2024, Gnyot was released from prison and placed under house arrest. Friends had rented him an apartment in Belgrade before the final decision was made. “They gave me an electronic ankle bracelet. I am allowed to leave the apartment once a day… for exactly one hour.”
Then the hearings began again – and when they ended in June 2024, Serbia’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of extradition. Gnyot and his legal team appealed again. An appeals court has been reviewing this request since August 27.
“If the appeal court does not rule in my favor, the Minister of Justice will have to sign the extradition papers. Then Serbia will send me to my death,” says Gnyot. “Violence, torture and the destruction of my physical and mental health await me in Belarus. I have a hard fight ahead of me… to be able to leave this apartment and go home and not be destroyed by a dictatorship.”
International support for Andrey Gnyot
The International Criminal Police Organization INTERPOL blocked access to Gnyot’s personal data in February 2024. In July 2024, INTERPOL informed a European Union (EU) delegation in Serbia that there were no grounds to issue an international arrest warrant against Gnyot.
Ahead of the court hearings in Belgrade, Marie Struthers, Amnesty International’s (AI) Regional Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said: “Given the ongoing human rights violations in Belarus” and the clear threat posed by Andrey Gnyot, it is important that the Serbian authorities “immediately end the extradition process”. No one who has taken part in anti-government activities “must under any circumstances be extradited to Alexander Lukashenko’s regime.”
The Belgrade Center for Human Rights (BCHR) is pessimistic and points out that Serbia has repeatedly violated the rights of individuals in extraditions.
“Previous practice has shown that courts very often explicitly state in their decisions that they are not competent to decide whether a person is at risk of deportation or torture in their country,” Petar Vidosavljevic of the BCHR told DW. Judges said “that this is either the responsibility of the asylum office or the asylum procedure or the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice, because the Minister of Justice can stop extradition when it comes to political crimes.”
In the meantime, demonstrations in support of Andrey Gnyot have taken place in around 20 countries. Hundreds of artists have also signed an open letter from the Belarus Independent Film Academy (BIFA), including Nobel Prize winner for literature Svetlana Alexievich, President of the European Film Academy Juliette Binoche, directors Wim Wenders and Yorgos Lanthimos, stage director Kirill Serebrennikov and actors Sandra Hüller and Margarethe von Trotta.
Sanja Kljajic in Belgrade contributed to this article, which was originally published in Russian
