(Credit: Gazeta Wyborcza, screenshot)
A journalist was arrested and charged for libeling Belarus’s president for the second time in the past year, The New York Times reported.
Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza‘s Andrzej Poczobut, was “indicted on libel charges after alleging that President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko influenced a court decision to execute two men convicted of an April 2011 bombing of a Minsk subway station,” according to The Times.
We wrote last year when Poczobut was convicted of libeling Lukahsenko in 10 articles, in which he called the president a “dictator.”
The European Parliament criticized the charges against Poczobut, writing that it “deplores the fact that the Belarusian authorities are making it impossible for journalists to operate, by introducing repressive laws aimed at silencing civil society activities,” according to Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty.
Read more about Poczobut’s case on the Committee to Protect Journalists‘ website here.
