{"id":562199,"date":"2026-07-24T11:36:47","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T08:36:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reform.news\/?p=562199"},"modified":"2026-07-24T12:20:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T09:20:15","slug":"vaitsiakhouski-who-returned-from-poland-added-to-belarus-s-terrorist-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/vaitsiakhouski-who-returned-from-poland-added-to-belarus-s-terrorist-list","title":{"rendered":"Vaitsiakhouski, Who Returned From Poland, Added to Belarus\u2019s \u201cTerrorist\u201d List"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p><b>Anatol Vaitsiakhouski<\/b>, who returned to Belarus from Poland, has been added to the list of \u201cpersons involved in terrorist activities\u201d maintained by Belarus\u2019s State Security Committee (KGB).<\/p>\n<p>In the 1990s, Vaitsiakhouski founded one of the first private newspapers in Baranavichy, \u201cShah.\u201d In the 2000s, he went into business. In April 2023, he was detained over comments posted online. He later was evacuated to Poland with the assistance of BYSOL.<\/p>\n<p>In March last year, Vaitsiakhouski and another activist, <strong><b>Uladzimir Usser<\/b><\/strong>, with whom he shared an apartment in Bia\u0142ystok, appeared in the Belarusian state television propaganda film \u201cAlien Sky,\u201d in which Belarusians spoke about the difficulties of life in exile. It later emerged that they had been deceived into participating.<\/p>\n<p>In November 2025, Usser was detained by Poland\u2019s Internal Security Agency (ABW). He was charged with acting on behalf of a foreign intelligence service against Poland. Because of his health condition, he was not placed in pretrial detention. He was initially treated in hospital and later stayed in a shelter in Bia\u0142ystok. He died in early December.<\/p>\n<p>After Usser\u2019s death, Vaitsiakhouski stopped showing up for work as a taxi driver, deleted his Telegram profile and switched off his phone. He later unexpectedly resurfaced in Belarus and <a href=\"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/vaitsiakhouski-who-returned-to-belarus-appears-in-bt-propaganda-film\">appeared in a state propaganda video<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>He was tried on four politically motivated charges:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Part 3 of Article 361 of the Criminal Code \u2014 \u201ccalling for sanctions\u201d;<\/li>\n<li>Part 2 of Article 367 of the Criminal Code \u2014 \u201cdefaming Lukashenka\u201d;<\/li>\n<li>Part 2 of Article 368 of the Criminal Code \u2014 \u201cinsulting Lukashenka\u201d;<\/li>\n<li>Part 1 of Article 361-4 of the Criminal Code \u2014 \u201cfacilitating extremist activity.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As <a href=\"https:\/\/nashaniva.com\/400112\">reported<\/a> by Nasha Niva, the minimum sentence under those charges was four years in a penal colony. However, Vaitsiakhouski was sentenced to restricted freedom without being sent to a correctional institution.<\/p>\n<p>He had previously been added to the Interior Ministry\u2019s list of \u201cextremists.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cterrorist\u201d list now contains 1,471 names, 719 of whom are Belarusians.<\/p>\n<p>Accusations of extremism and terrorism in Belarus are widely used against opponents of the authorities and dissent more broadly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anatol Vaitsiakhouski, who returned to Belarus from Poland, has been added to the list of \u201cpersons involved in terrorist activities\u201d maintained by Belarus\u2019s State Security Committee (KGB). In the 1990s, Vaitsiakhouski founded one of the first private newspapers in Baranavichy, \u201cShah.\u201d In the 2000s, he went into business. In April 2023, he was detained over [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":562198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sharing_image":{"poster":"https:\/\/reform.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/6a632e535f0b5.jpg","width":1200,"height":630,"template":"691142dd","mode":"auto"},"_sharing_image_fieldset":{"dTVKfmI95PYT":"Vaitsiakhouski, Who Returned From Poland, Added to Belarus\u2019s \u201cTerrorist\u201d List"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[142339,142338,143090],"tags":[143118],"class_list":["post-562199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main","category-news","category-politics","tag-belarus"],"wps_subtitle":"","permalink_manager":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}