Belarus filmmaker pleads with Serbia not to send him back

Andrei Gnyot took part in anti-government protests in Belarus four years ago

A Belarusian filmmaker and opposition activist, Andrei Gnyot, has made a final, passionate appeal to a court in Serbia not to extradite him to Minsk, warning that he faces "inevitable torture and inevitable death" if he is sent back.

The activist urged the panel of three judges to "please, save my life", describing Belarus under Alexander Lukashenko as a "dictatorial system which tortures and kills".

He was arrested when he flew into Belgrade last October, on an international arrest warrant issued by Belarus for alleged tax evasion.

Mr Gnyot says he is being pursued because of his politics.

In his address, seen by the BBC, Mr Gnyot said he was an ordinary person who had stood up against authoritarian rule and was now being made to pay the price.

The Court of Appeal in Belgrade now has 30 days to deliver its ruling in writing, at which point the activist could be removed from the country immediately.

Mr Gnyot, who describes himself as a "journalist, film director, political activist and political prisoner", took part in the giant opposition protests that swept Belarus in August 2020 after claims of mass vote-rigging in the presidential elections.

He filmed the rallies and shared the material.

He also co-founded a group known as SOS.BY which united prominent athletes speaking out against the Belarus leader's authoritarian rule.

Mr Gnyot helped them make short, powerful films, to deliver their message. He was also instrumental, he says, in getting a major ice hockey tournament relocated from Belarus, depriving Alexander Lukashenko of a prestigious international event and his favourite sport.

An Interpol red notice that was issued against him has since been withdrawn, after Mr Gnyot’s lawyers say they explained the politics. He denies any wrongdoing.

But Serbia is still considering the extradition request from Belarus.

A lawyer for Mr Gnyot pointed out that Belarus has a long record of pressing economic charges against opponents. Ales Bialiatski, the jailed Nobel Laureate and veteran human rights activist from the group Viasna, was also detained initially for tax evasion.

“We know what a politically motivated case looks like,” Maria Hudzilina told the BBC, recounting the evidence she had seen in Mr Gnyot’s case. “As a lawyer, I said yes. This is politically motivated. We have all the arguments, all the documents for this.”

Her fear, and that of her client, is that in Belarus the activist would be charged with extremism, like other opposition figures before him.

Maria Kolesnikova and Maxim Znak are among the political prisoners jailed for extremism over the anti-government protests in 2020

Viasna currently lists hundreds of political prisoners there. Many of the most prominent have been held "incommunicado", allowed no contact at all with lawyers or relatives for several years. Arrests of political opponents have not stopped.

The risk doesn’t end abroad.

Hundreds of thousands of people have fled Belarus since the 2020 protests, which were eventually crushed brutally by police.

Many have since been tried and convicted in absentia for their role in the rallies. That means all future travel is restricted, to avoid detention in countries that maintain ties to Minsk or Moscow.

Mr Gnyot has already spent seven months in prison in Belgrade, only allowed out of his cell for two hours a day. Since then he has been under house arrest, "locked in my home, totally alone, for 23 hours a day", as he told the court.

On the eve of his final hearing, dozens of prominent fellow film makers and artists – including Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland and Nobel prize-winning author Svetlana Alexievich - signed an open letter to Serbian authorities, urging them not to extradite him.

But his application against extradition has already been rejected twice by previous courts. His lawyers say the judges there failed to appreciate the reality of political oppression in Belarus.

Ending his final speech, Andrei Gnyot told the panel of judges that he was being pursued in Minsk because he had fought “against the falsification of elections, against violence and the violation of the laws and constitution. That is what Lukashenko throws people in prison for”.

He urged them not to make a “small mistake” which he warned would become “a big stain” on the history of modern Serbia, that could not then be removed.