
Belarusian filmmaker and opposition activist Andrei Gnyot has made a passionate ultimate attraction to a Serbian court docket to not extradite him to Minsk, warning that if he’s deported, He’ll face “inevitable torture and inevitable dying.”
The activist urged the three-judge panel to “please save my life” and described Belarus underneath Alexander Lukashenko as a “dictatorship of torture and killing”.
He was arrested final October whereas flying to Belgrade on a global arrest warrant issued by Belarus on suspicion of tax evasion.
Geniotte mentioned he was being pursued due to his political opinions.
Geniot mentioned in a speech seen by the BBC that he was an strange one who as soon as stood up in opposition to the dictatorship however was now compelled to pay the value.
The Belgrade Court docket of Attraction now has 30 days to challenge a written ruling, at which era the activist may very well be instantly deported.
Mr Geniot, who describes himself as a “journalist, movie director, political activist and political prisoner”, attended the occasion Large opposition protests swept Belarus in August 2020 following accusations of large vote manipulation within the presidential election.
He filmed the rally and shared the fabric.
He additionally co-founded a gaggle referred to as SOS.BY, which united outstanding athletes to talk out in opposition to the authoritarian rule of Belarusian leaders.
Mr. Geniot helped them create brief however highly effective movies that conveyed their message. He mentioned he additionally helped transfer a serious ice hockey event from Belarus to a different nation, depriving Alexander Lukashenko of prestigious worldwide competitors and the possibility to play his favourite sport.
An Interpol pink discover for Geniot’s arrest has been withdrawn after his legal professionals mentioned they defined political causes. He denies any wrongdoing.
However Serbia remains to be contemplating Belarus’ extradition request.
Geniot’s legal professionals famous that Belarus has an extended historical past of leveling monetary expenses in opposition to opponents. Ales Bialiatski, imprisoned Nobel laureate and senior human rights activist with the Viasna Group, He was additionally initially detained for tax evasion.
“We all know what politically motivated circumstances seem like,” Maria Hudzilina advised the BBC, describing the proof she had seen in Mr Geniot’s case. “As a lawyer, I say sure. That is politically motivated. We’ve all of the arguments, all of the paperwork.
Each she and her shoppers concern that in Belarus the activist will probably be accused of extremism like different opposition figures earlier than him.

Viasna at the moment lists tons of of political prisoners. Most of the most well-known individuals had been held in “solitary confinement” and weren’t allowed any contact with legal professionals or family for years. Arrests of political opponents haven’t stopped.
The dangers do not finish overseas.
Tons of of hundreds of individuals have fled Belarus because the 2020 protests, which had been finally brutally suppressed by police.
Many individuals have since been tried in absentia and convicted for his or her roles within the rallies. Which means that all future journey is restricted to keep away from detention in nations with hyperlinks to Minsk or Moscow.
Geniot has spent seven months in a Belgrade jail and was solely allowed out of his cell for 2 hours a day. He has been underneath home arrest since then, “locked alone in his dwelling 23 hours a day,” he advised the court docket.
On the eve of his ultimate listening to, dozens of outstanding filmmakers and artists – together with Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland and Nobel Prize-winning writer Svetlana Alexei Jevic – signed an open letter to Serbian authorities urging them to not extradite him.
However his anti-extradition purposes have been rejected twice by earlier courts. His lawyer mentioned judges there have been unaware of the fact of political oppression in Belarus.
Andrei Geniot concluded his ultimate speech by telling the panel of judges that he was being pursued in Minsk as a result of he “opposed electoral fraud, violence and violations of the legislation and the structure.” This is the reason Lukashenko places individuals in jail.”
He urged them to not make “small errors,” which he warned would turn into “a giant stain” on trendy Serbian historical past that would not be erased.