34-year-old Belarus-born Karina Zdanevich-Spychalska (Karina Zdanewicz Spychalska) has been unable for almost three and a half months to leave Italy and return to her children in Poland. According to the Italian newspaper Il Giorno, she was detained on February 1 at Orio al Serio Airport under an arrest warrant issued in 2021 by a deputy prosecutor in Brest. She is accused of “intentional economic insolvency,” that is, bankruptcy allegedly committed in 2017–2018.
The woman describes the charges as fabricated. According to her, the Belarusian authorities likely identified her through photographs on social media. After the 2020 election, she participated in rallies outside the Belarusian embassy in Warsaw in support of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. The warrant was issued during the period of mass repression following the protests.
“These are false and artificially created accusations,” she says. “Their purpose is to persecute people who, like me, no longer live in Belarus and oppose the regime. There is no freedom in my home country. I have several friends who were imprisoned for participating in the protests of 2020 and 2021, and they never returned.”
After her detention, Karina spent five days in prison in Bergamo, after which she was released under an obligation to report to authorities and has since been living in Milan with acquaintances.
“I came to Italy as a tourist,” she said. “And I was arrested during passport control at the airport when this arrest warrant appeared. I spent five days in prison in Bergamo.”
The case is being considered by the Brescia Court of Appeal. The prosecutor’s office opposed extradition, citing, among other things, an appeal from the Polish consulate warning of the danger of the woman being persecuted by the Lukashenka regime, since she holds dual Polish-Belarusian citizenship. A hearing is scheduled for June, and representatives of the Polish consulate and Belarusian activists in Italy plan to attend.
Karina’s lawyer Piero Porciani called for her data to be removed from the Interpol system in order to prevent similar cases in the future.
“The Italian justice system is beginning to understand the essence of the case,” he noted. “And I hope for a favorable outcome of the hearing. It is necessary to immediately remove the wanted notice from the Interpol system so that such cases are not repeated, and to hope that measures taken by certain countries will be carefully analyzed, given that there are still many people persecuted by Russia or Belarus.”
