Belarus releases US citizen who was jailed for years
TALLINN, Estonia, May 1, (AP): Belarus on Wednesday released a US citizen who had been jailed on allegations of plotting to assassinate the country's authoritarian leader, charges his supporters and the US government called bogus. Youras Ziankovich, a lawyer who has dual Belarusian and U.S. citizenship, was convicted on a number of charges, including plotting a coup against Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, and given an 11-year sentence in September 2022.
He then had six months added to his sentence later that year. In August 2024, a court in Belarus handed Ziankovich an additional two-year sentence on charges of "malicious disobedience to the prison administration,' bringing his overall prison term to 13 1/2 years. The US government on Wednesday identified the man as Youras Ziankovich but his name has also been rendered as Yuras Zyankovich in different news accounts.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who designated Ziankovich as wrongfully detained in February, announced his release on Wednesday and said he would return to the United States soon. Rubio acknowledged "Lukashenko's humanitarian gesture' and thanks the Lithuanians, calling them "incredible allies' who have been "supportive of our efforts these past few months to bring Americans home.' Ziankovich was arrested in Russia in April 2021 together with Alexander Feduta, who served as a spokesman for Lukashenko when he was first elected in 1994.
Feduta later joined the opposition. Russia's Federal Security Service, the country's main security agency also known as the FSB, said at the time without offering any evidence that Ziankovich and Feduta came to Moscow to meet with opposition-minded Belarusian generals and were plotting a military coup. In 2020, Belarus was rocked by its largest-ever protests following an election that gave Lukashenko a sixth term in office but was condemned by the opposition and the West as fraudulent. In response to the demonstrations, Lukashenko unleashed a harsh crackdown on dissent.
According to Viasna, Belarus' top human rights group, 65,000 people have been arrested since the protests began and hundreds of thousands have fled Belarus. Pavel Sapelka, a rights advocate with Viasna, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Ziankovich has been "under constant and harsh pressure from the authorities' behind bars and lost a lot of weight in harsh prison conditions. Since last year, Lukashenko pardoned about 250 political prisoners. He also released one American from custody this past February.
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