Belarusian dissident fears “torture and death” if extradited from Serbia

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A year after his arrest in Serbia, a prominent Belarusian dissident still lives in fear that he could be extradited to his home country, where he is convinced he will face torture or even death.

The plight of Andrey Gnyot highlights not only the bleak outlook for opponents of Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, a steadfast ally of Moscow, but also the tightrope that the Serbian leadership is walking between Western rapprochement and historic loyalty to Russia.

“Since 2020, 25 political prisoners have died in Belarus,” Gnyot told the Financial Times during his house arrest in a Belgrade apartment overlooking a brick wall. “100 percent torture and death await me there.”

According to human rights group Viasna, Lukashenko has been in power for 30 years and has now jailed around 1,300 political opponents.

The 42-year-old was arrested last year on the basis of an international arrest warrant sought by Minsk over tax evasion allegations. He had been living in Thailand since 2021 and fled there after being invited for an interview by the Belarusian security service, which still goes by the Soviet name KGB.

He spoke to the FT shortly after the Serbian appeal court referred his extradition case back to the high court in Belgrade for the third time, extending his painful limbo.

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

“It is a difficult task for Serbia to save face and maintain good relations with those who support Russia while maintaining its EU integration plan,” said Franak Viačorka, senior adviser to exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

“There was 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 primarily because he helped dissident athletes respond to Lukashenko's brutal crackdown on democracy protests after his re-election in 2020. The athletes sent an open letter to the International Olympic Committee calling for an investigation into the regime's harassment and calling on the IOC to suspend Minsk.

Gnyot's club also contributed to Minsk's removal as co-host of the 2021 Ice Hockey World Cup, which eventually took place only in Latvia.

The Belarusian regime claims it wants to convict him of tax evasion, but has previously condemned his work and activism against Lukashenko.

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

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

When he told the Belgrade court that the Belarusian dictatorship had used tax evasion, “Paragraph 243,” to imprison its enemies, Gnyot recalled the judge saying: “Dictatorship in Belarus? This is the first time in my life that I've heard of it. Do you have any evidence?”

But Viačorka of the Belarusian opposition said the arrest should also raise questions about how Interpol can help sometimes authoritarian regimes.

“Any country can send a red notice to the international database, but it is a very strange situation when Interpol basically works on behalf of dictatorships to arrest those who don't like dictators,” he said.