Polish minority leader says she met with imprisoned journalist Pačobut

April 16, Pozirk. Polish minority leader Andżelika Borys has met with Andrzej Pačobut (Pol. Poczobut), a Polish minority activist and journalist, at Navapołack’s colony, the Polish president’s press office said on April 15.

Borys told President Andrzej Duda that the meeting had been approved by Alaksandar Łukašenka. The press office has not specified the date.

In February 2023, authorities sentenced Pačobut to eight years in prison on charges of inciting hatred and calling for sanctions that harmed the national security of Belarus.

In response to the verdict, Poland closed Bobrowniki, one of the two road checkpoints available for travelers. In March 2023, Łukašenka said he was not ready to free Pačobut in exchange for the opening of the Bobrowniki border crossing.

A year ago, prosecutors dropped charges against Borys, who was a suspect in the same case, citing the lack of evidence, after she had spent one year under house arrest after a year in custody.

Gazeta Wyborcza contributor Pačobut, also known as an activist of the unregistered Union of Poles in Belarus (UPB), has been in custody since March 2021.

He was arrested after masked police officers raided his home in Hrodna on March 25.

On the same day, the Prosecutor General’s Office announced that it had instituted criminal proceedings against UPB leader Andzelika Borys and “other individuals.”

It said that the criminal case had been opened under Part Three of the Criminal Code’s Article 130, which penalizes incitement to racial, ethnic, religious or other social hatred and “the rehabilitation of Nazism.”

“The individuals, positioning themselves as members of the above mentioned union, have organized and held a number of illegal mass events with the involvement of under-18-year-olds in the city of Hrodna and in other localities in the [Hrodna] region since 2018 with a view to honoring members of anti-Soviet gangs that were active during and after the [1941-1945] Great Patriotic War, committed robberies, murdered Belarus’ civilians, destroyed property. Their actions were aimed at rehabilitating Nazism and justifying the genocide of the Belarusian people,” the Prosecutor General’s Office charged.

Later, prosecutors also accused Pačobut of calling for sanctions.

In 2022, Pačobut refused to petition Łukašenka for pardon.

The Committee for State Security (KGB) put him on the list of “persons involved in terrorist activities.”

Of five defendants in the case, Pačobut is the only one to remain in prison.

Also read: Leader of Union of Poles released from house arrest – media reports