World News | Belarus drops charges against Polish minority activist

TALLINN, April 4 (AP) – A prominent Polish minority activist has been released in Belarus after authorities dropped criminal charges against her following a two-year criminal investigation, officials said Tuesday.

The Belarusian Prosecutor General’s Office has announced that the criminal investigation against 49-year-old Anzelika Boris has been concluded, all charges against her have been dropped and she has been released from house arrest.

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Boris was arrested in March 2021 and converted to house arrest a year later due to his deteriorating health.

She has been accused of fomenting inter-ethnic strife and condoning populism – charges she has rejected.

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The prosecutor’s move follows comments on Friday from Belarus’ authoritarian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, who said Boris had expressed his intention to remain in Belarus.

“She’s Polish, but she’s my Polish,” he said.

About 300,000 of Belarus’ population of 9.5 million are Polish. Belarusian authorities shut down the Polish coalition led by Boris after accusing Poland of trying to foment an uprising against Lukashenko, who led the former Soviet state with an iron fist for nearly 29 years.

The Polish foreign ministry welcomed Boris’ acquittal as “the first good news from Minsk in a long time” and expressed hope that it would herald a change in the attitude of the Belarusian authorities towards Belarusian Poles, and willingness to engage in constructive dialogue.

In February, Andrzej Poczobut, 49, was sentenced to eight years in prison for endangering Belarusian state security and “inciting discord”.

Poczobut, a journalist for the influential Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza and a top figure in the Belarusian Union of Poles, has been in prison since his detention in March 2021.

Poczobut has reported extensively on the mass protests that engulfed Belarus following the August 2020 presidential election in which Lukashenko was given a new term but rejected by the opposition and the West as rigged.

Polish foreign ministry spokesman Lukasz Jasina reiterated calls for Minsk to release Poczobut and drop all charges against him, adding that “this issue remains our top priority.” (AP)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)