Andrzej Poczobut: photo - wikipedia
Andrzej Poczobut, a local correspondent for the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza daily and a leading activist in the Union of Poles in Belarus – an organisation representing the 300,000 Polish minority in the country that it not recognised by the authorities in Minsk – has already been arrested three times in the last two years, and has served a prison term, since protests in December 2010 against what are regarded by the international community as rigged presidential elections.
"When the police came, we were at home,” the journalist's wife Aksana revealed, as quoted by the Polish Press Agency (PAP).
"They did an inspection, took the computer, and took Andrzej to the prosecutor's office and from there straight to prison."
“All this has happened very quickly," she said.
Igor Bancer, an activist for the Union of Poles in Belarus, told PAP that the arrest is due to articles allegedly defaming Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko in opposition media outlets Belaruski Partizan and Karta 97.
Banker suggested that the arrest is most probably in connection with a series of articles questioning the death sentence given in March 2012 to the two men charged with the April 2011 Minsk metro bombing. Fifteen people were killed in the blast.
Poczobut was first arrested in December 2010, during protests against the re-election of President Lukashenko.
He was arrested again in early 2011, and in July that year sentenced to three years in prison – ultimately commuted to a two-year suspended sentence – for defamation of the president.
Poczobut was informed that if he continued to defame Lukashenko, he would be prosecuted.
Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Marcin Bosacki says that they are “working on the issue, both in the consulate in Grodno, and the Polish embassy in Minsk,” according to ministry spokesman Marcin Bosacki. (pg/nh)