Journalist Ihar Ilyash’s trial to resume on September 4

The Min­sk City Court will resume the tri­al of jour­nal­ist Ihar Ilyash on Sep­tem­ber 4. He is accused of facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ism and dis­cred­it­ing Belarus.

Ihar Ilyash. Pho­to: “Novy Chas”

“It took [a gov­ern­ment-hired expert] sev­er­al months to con­duct a psy­cholin­guis­tic analy­sis of Ihar’s ana­lyt­i­cal texts,” wrote Siarhiej Vahanaŭ, the grand­fa­ther of Ilyash’s impris­oned wife, on Face­book.

The court is expect­ed to hear the find­ings of the gov­ern­ment-appoint­ed expert, Pro­fes­sor Siarhiej Liebi­adzin­ki, head of a depart­ment at Belaru­sian State Uni­ver­si­ty. Vahanaŭ empha­sized that he does not know what con­clu­sions have been drawn.

The pros­e­cu­tor alleges that Ihar Ilyash dis­sem­i­nat­ed “delib­er­ate­ly false infor­ma­tion.”

“Frankly speak­ing, as a pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ist with more than 60 years of expe­ri­ence and hun­dreds of ana­lyt­i­cal and jour­nal­is­tic arti­cles and essays, I am eager to learn what ‘delib­er­ate­ly false infor­ma­tion’ Ihar Ilyash sup­pos­ed­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed,” Vahanaŭ com­ment­ed. “I have read near­ly all of Ihar’s texts and have always not­ed their mea­sured and bal­anced tone, fact-based log­i­cal analy­sis, and con­clu­sions — some­times very unex­pect­ed ones,” he added.

The tri­al was adjourned near­ly six months ago, on March 12, after the judge reject­ed Iljaš’s motion to have his arti­cles exam­ined by the State Foren­sic Exam­i­na­tion Center.(Bakhvalava)

Vahanaŭ is the grand­fa­ther of  Ilyash’s wife, Kat­siary­na Andreye­va (Bakhvala­va), who is serv­ing a lengthy prison sen­tence. Her pros­e­cu­tion is wide­ly regard­ed as polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed.

Ihar Ilyash was arrest­ed in late Octo­ber 2024 over inter­views he gave to media out­lets labeled as extrem­ist by the gov­ern­ment.

Human rights groups con­sid­er both Andreje­va and Ihar Ilyash to be polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.

In recent years, the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment has equat­ed inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism with extrem­ism, pros­e­cut­ing indi­vid­u­als for giv­ing inter­views to non-state media out­lets.

Accord­ing to the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, at least 36 Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists are cur­rent­ly behind bars.