Aliaksandr FIADUTA

Writer, political analyst, literary critic and PEN Belarus member Aliaksandr Fiaduta continued to serve a 10-year prison term, imposed in September 2022 and upheld in November 2022. He was convicted of ‘conspiracy or other acts committed to seize or hold state power in an unconstitutional manner’ under Article 357.1 of the Belarusian Criminal Code, in relation to an alleged US-planned ‘coup’ and ‘assassination attempt’ against President Aliaksandr Lukašenka and his family. News that he was detained in the Russian Federation emerged on 13 April 2021, and he was subsequently returned to Belarus by the Belarusian KGB. Fiaduta suffers from serious heart problems (see Case Lists 2023/2024, and 2022). Fiaduta previously received a suspended two-year prison term in May 2011. 

Once an active member of Lukašenka’s campaign team and later the President’s press secretary, Aliaksandr Fiaduta, born on 3 November 1964, resigned from this post in the mid-1990s and joined the opposition. He became a vocal opponent of the current government and notably worked as a journalist for Russian and Belarusian independent newspapers (Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta, Moskovskie Novosti, Imia, and Narodnaja Volia). In December 2010, Fiaduta was arrested while working on an opposition campaign, and wrote American Poems while in pre-trial detention. American Poems won the 2012 Aleś Adamovič Award issued by PEN Belarus.