A court in Minsk has sentenced Belarusian journalist and media manager Dmitry Navosha, whom the authorities consider involved in the creation of the Black Book of Belarus Telegram channel, which published the personal data of the security forces. According to Tribuna.com, Navosha was found guilty of inciting social hatred and illegal disclosure of personal data and sentenced in absentia to 12 years in prison.
The same sentence was handed down to Daniil Bogdanovich, Yanina Sazanovich, Olga Vysotskaya and Valeria Zanemonskaya. All five convicts are outside Belarus. This was the first trial in the so-called special proceedings, in which people are judged in absentia, Interfax notes . The law, which created the institution of special proceedings in criminal cases against people outside Belarus, was adopted in July.
“After all, this is a new degree of cringe: when the inhabitants of the strict regime colony into which these ghouls turned Belarus (including for themselves; they hid the recent death penalty for state officials for “treason against the state” without the slightest objection), they decide the fate of the inaccessible them people from the free world,” Navosh commented on the verdict in his Telegram channel.
Dmitry Navosha is best known as the founder of the Tribuna.com and Sports.ru portals. The latter is one of the largest sports online publications in Russia. In May 2021, Sports.ru was blocked in Belarus. Navosha has repeatedly criticized Alexander Lukashenko and the Belarusian security forces, and also created a fund to help people who have lost their jobs due to participation in protests.
The Black Book of Belarus published information about security forces who violated the law and used violence against protesters. Russian woman Sofya Sapega was accused of involvement in this channel, who in May 2022 was sentenced in Belarus to six years in prison. In January, the girl's family reported that she had been denied a pardon.