{"id":17308,"date":"2025-11-14T14:06:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T14:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/?p=17308"},"modified":"2025-11-19T14:06:25","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T14:06:25","slug":"igar-ilyash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/2025\/11\/14\/igar-ilyash.html","title":{"rendered":"Ihar Ilja\u0161"},"content":{"rendered":"
Political persecution:<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In November 2020, Ihar Ilja\u0161 was arrested for 15 days for “participating in picketing.”<\/p>\n

In July 2021, he was arrested for 15 days during mass searches and detentions of independent journalists.<\/p>\n

On 22 October 2024, it became known that Ihar Ilja\u0161 was detained in Minsk.<\/strong> As seen in the video footage of the apartment break-in, four police commandos were deployed to detain him.<\/p>\n

On 22 October, a Telegram channel linked to the security services published a video with Ihar Ilja\u0161. In the teaser, the authors of the channel wrote: “Following the steps of his wife. This Polish journalist-spy, together with his wife, was involved in promoting extremist formations and collecting information for foreign intelligence. His spouse has been in prison for extremism and state treason for a long time while her husband was still at large, as his activities were carefully documented. We have corrected this blatant injustice.”<\/p>\n

On 30 October 2024, it became known that Ihar Ilja\u0161 was transferred to the pre-trial detention centre in Kaliadzi\u010dy. It means that he has been officially charged with a crime.<\/p>\n

On November 22, 2024, Ihar Ilja\u0161 was recognized as a political prisoner.<\/strong><\/p>\n

On 21 February, the Minsk City Court began the criminal trial of Ihar Ilja\u0161. He is accused under Article 369-1 (discrediting Belarus) and Part 2, Article 361-4 (facilitating extremist activities).<\/p>\n

On 12 March, it became known that the Minsk City Court had paused the criminal trial of Ihar Ilja\u0161. Journalist\u00a0Siarhiej Vahana\u016d, the grandfather of\u00a0Ilja\u0161\u2019s\u00a0wife, political prisoner\u00a0Kaciaryna Andrejeva (Bachva\u0142ava),\u00a0wrote on Facebook:\u00a0\u201cA break has now been announced because, at the request of the state prosecutor, the court has sent Ihar\u2019s analytical publications in the media to an expert from an extrajudicial expert organization, Professor, Doctor of Philology, and Head of the Department at the Faculty of Philology at BSU, S. I. Lebiadzinski. However, Ihar and his lawyer had petitioned for an expert review at the State Center for Forensic Examinations, but the court denied their request. As a result, the court and all of us are now awaiting the results of the expert review.\u201d\u00a0<\/i>News of Ihar Ilja\u0161\u2019s arrest first surfaced on 22 October 2024. Ihar Ilja\u0161 is a journalist who, along with his wife, journalist\u00a0Kaciaryna Andrejeva (Bachva\u0142ava)\u00a0(currently a political prisoner), co-authored the book\u00a0Belarusian Donbas<\/i>\u00a0(2020) about Belarusians\u2019 participation in the war in eastern Ukraine. In March 2021, a court declared the book \u201cextremist.\u201d<\/p>\n

On 4 and 5 September, the Minsk City Court heard in an open session the findings of a linguistic examination of publications by imprisoned journalist\u00a0Ihar Ilja\u0161. The assessment had been prepared over several months by Siarhiej Lebiadzinski, Doctor of Philological Sciences, who heads the Department of Theory and Methods of Teaching Russian as a Foreign Language at the Faculty of Philology of Belarusian State University.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Journalist Siarhiej Vahana\u016d, the grandfather of\u00a0Ilja\u0161\u2019s wife, fellow imprisoned journalist Kaciaryna Andrejeva, described on his Facebook page the court proceedings of 4 and 5 September. In his view, the expert evaluation of\u00a0Ilja\u0161\u2019s publications was based on Mr Liebiadzinski\u2019s political beliefs rather than objective analysis. Vahana\u016d noted: \u201cFor example, the expert considers it inappropriate for a journalist or political analyst to use the term \u2018political prisoners\u2019 because such a concept does not exist in Belarusian legislation. That\u2019s right, it does not exist in Belarusian law, but it does exist in international political science, as does the term \u2018political emigration\u2019. Yet, according to the expert, one should instead use the expression \u2018fugitive oppositionists\u2019. Similarly, the word \u2018dictatorship\u2019, which is regularly used by representatives of the authorities themselves, including the head of state, was declared entirely unacceptable. [\u2026] Nor, according to the expert, should the phrase \u2018war against Ukraine\u2019 be used; it must be described instead as a \u2018war against the Kyiv regime\u2019 rather than against the people. As proof, he claimed that Russian troops \u2018do not capture \u2013 or rather, do not liberate \u2013 cities because they are concerned about the population living there\u2019\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

On 12 September, the Minsk City Court held another open hearing in\u00a0the case of Ihar Ilja\u0161. The judge announced the conclusion of the investigation phase and the beginning of closing arguments. The prosecution requested a prison sentence of four years and a fine of 100 base units. The defence called for acquittal. In his final statement, Ilja\u0161 rejected all charges and pleaded not guilty.<\/span><\/p>\n

On 16 September 2025, the Minsk City Court sentenced Ihar Ilja\u0161 for comments given to independent media. He was convicted under Article 361-4 of the Criminal Code (facilitating extremist activity) and Article 369-1 (discrediting Belarus). The court imposed a sentence of four years in a penal colony and a fine of 100 base units (equivalent to 4,200 Belarusian rubles or approximately 1,382 US dollars).<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

On 14 November, the Supreme Court considered the appeal of writer and journalist\u00a0Ihar Ilja\u0161<\/b>. The judicial panel rejected the appeal and upheld the lower court\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n

Creative activity:<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Born on 18 July 1988.<\/p>\n

Journalist, a philosopher by education, co-author of the documentary book Belarusian Donbas<\/em> (K. Andrejeva, I. Ilja\u0161. Belorussky Donbas. 2020. ISBN: 978-966-03-9020-1), written together with his wife Kaciaryna Andrejeva (Bachvalava) \u2013 she has been in prison since 2020 due to a politically motivated case<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The book was labelled “extremist”<\/a> in Belarus in 2021.<\/p>\n

The book Belarusian Donbas<\/em> contains the stories of Belarusian citizens who fought on the side of Ukraine and Russian occupation forces since 2014.<\/p>\n

Publications:<\/strong><\/h5>\n

K. Andrejeva, I. Ilja\u0161. Belorussky Donbas. 2020. ISBN: 978-966-03-9020-1<\/p>\n

Place of detention:<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Pre-trial detention centre No. 1, Navadvorski village council, 143\/4, Pa\u0161kovi\u010dy, Minsk district, Minsk region, 223016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Journalist, philosopher and writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":117,"featured_media":17309,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4282],"class_list":["post-17308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-people-of-word"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/117"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17308"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21056,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17308\/revisions\/21056"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}