Дмитрий Лаевский. Скриншот видео
Human rights defenders have learned details of the criminal case against lawyer Dzmitry Laeuski. It became known yesterday that he had been sentenced to three years in prison.
As reported to the Viasna Human Rights Center by Yauhen Pylchanka, a friend and former colleague of Laeuski, the lawyer was charged under Article 361-4 of the Criminal Code (facilitating extremist activities) and Article 369-1 of the Criminal Code (discrediting the Republic of Belarus).
The criminal case was opened in August 2025. Laeuski was also detained at the time, but was not remanded in custody. He remained at liberty until the trial.
He was charged with a total of nine episodes: eight under Article 361-4 of the Criminal Code (facilitating extremist activities) and one under Article 369-1 of the Criminal Code (discrediting Belarus). All of them concerned interviews with independent Belarusian media outlets that Laeuski gave in 2020-2021, when he was representing politician Viktar Babaryka and lawyer Maksim Znak.
According to Pylchanka, the case materials include Laeuski’s interviews with RFE/RL, Euroradio, Zerkalo, Pozirk, Deutsche Welle, Malanka Media and Salidarnasts. For example, the case included an interview that the lawyer gave to RFE/RL in the courtroom immediately after closing arguments in the trial of politician Viktar Babaryka.
At the time the interviews were given, the outlets had not yet been designated as extremist organizations.
Yauhen Pylchanka stressed that such a formulation effectively amounts to an accusation of discrediting the Republic of Belarus (Article 369-1 of the Criminal Code). However, Laeuski was charged with the more serious offense of “facilitating extremist activities” in almost all the episodes, even though none of the media outlets had extremist status at the time of the interviews and were designated as “extremist organizations” several months or even years later. Only the interview with Salidarnasts resulted in the lawyer being charged with discrediting the Republic of Belarus — solely because that media outlet has not been designated as an “extremist organization” to date.
According to Pylchanka, the prosecution did not cite a single statement by the lawyer containing “false information” about any specific facts and therefore did not substantiate in any way what exactly constituted this “falsehood.”