{"id":611417,"date":"2026-04-28T14:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T14:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/611417\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T14:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T14:57:09","slug":"journalist-andrzej-poczobut-freed-from-prison-in-belarus-in-us-brokered-swap-deal-belarus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/611417\/","title":{"rendered":"Journalist Andrzej Poczobut freed from prison in Belarus in US-brokered swap deal | Belarus"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Polish-Belarusian journalist Andrzej Poczobut, the 2025 Sakharov prize winner, has been freed after five years in a Belarusian penal colony as part of a US-brokered multi-country swap deal.<\/p>\n

His release has been confirmed by Poland\u2019s prime minister, Donald Tusk, who posted a picture of him on social media, saying<\/a>: \u201cAndrzej Poczobut is free! Welcome to your Polish home, my friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

The release comes as part of a broader attempt to bring Belarus closer to the west, after the US secured the release of 123 prisoners<\/a> including the Nobel peace prize winner Ales Bialiatski and the opposition figure Maria Kalesnikava late last year and removed some sanctions, including on Belarusian potash, a key export.<\/p>\n

Poczobut \u2013 a prominent Polish community activist in Belarus and a journalist for Poland\u2019s newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza \u2013 was detained by the Belarusian authorities in 2021. He was sentenced to eight years in a penal colony after a process widely condemned as a politically motivated attempt to silence the regime\u2019s critics.<\/p>\n

In recent years, there were growing warnings about his deteriorating health, with a UN-mandated report published last month<\/a> sounding alarm over \u201cprolonged solitary confinement\u201d and \u201cdenial of essential medical care\u201d in the prison he was in.<\/p>\n

The release is part a US-brokered prisoner exchange involving several other countries: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine. Tusk said it was \u201cthe finale of a two-year complicated diplomatic game, full of dramatic twists and turns\u201d.<\/p>\n

The talks with Belarus\u2019s authoritarian leader, Aleksandr Lukashenko, often called \u201cEurope\u2019s last dictator\u201d, were led by the US special envoy to Belarus, John Coale, who confirmed that three Poles and two Moldovans were released as part of the swap.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a press conference in Warsaw, he said that \u201cbasically an argument with Lukashenko is, what are you getting out of this?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt hurts you internationally and if Belarus wants to join the family of nations, this kind of things have to stop. If you want to put people into prison for good reason, great, that\u2019s your business, but not for these types of crimes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Coale said he was planning to go back to Belarus in \u201ctwo or three weeks\u201d for further talks with the Belarusian regime.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States has a lot to do on this issue, there\u2019s 800 to 900 political prisoners left to get out of Belarus, and we haven\u2019t stopped our work at all until we get every last one of them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Poland\u2019s president, Karol Nawrocki, credited by Coale for his role in the swap, thanked the US president, Donald Trump, \u201cfor bringing out the release of our compatriot\u201d.<\/p>\n

Separately, the foreign minister, Rados\u0142aw Sikorski, said Poczobut\u2019s release was a symbol of Poland\u2019s commitment to look after Poles abroad and to the freedom of the media.<\/p>\n

He also praised the US-Polish relationship, stressing the exchange would not have happened without the US involvement, and thanked Trump.<\/p>\n

Russian state media reported that a jailed Russian archaeologist and historian, Alexander Butyagin, wanted by Ukraine for excavations in Russian-occupied Crimea, was released by Poland as part of the swap.<\/p>\n

In 2025, Poczobut was awarded the European parliament\u2019s Sakharov prize for freedom of thought, with the body\u2019s president, Roberta Metsola, hailing him and co-winner Mzia Amaglobeli from Georgia as \u201ctwo journalists whose courage shines as a beacon for all who refuse to be silenced\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth have paid a heavy price for speaking truth to power, becoming symbols of the struggle for freedom and democracy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, she responded to his release by saying it was \u201cwonderful news\u201d. \u201cVery happy to see Sakharov prize laureate Andrzej Poczobut free,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Poczobut\u2019s longtime employer, Gazeta Wyborcza, celebrated the release on its website, saying: \u201cAndrzej Poczobut is finally free! The dictator has released our colleague from the penal colony.\u201d<\/p>\n

The newspaper\u2019s deputy editor-in-chief, Bartosz Wieli\u0144ski, posted<\/a> a picture with Poczobut, captioned: \u201cThe first kilometres of freedom. We\u2019re heading to Warsaw.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Polish-Belarusian journalist Andrzej Poczobut, the 2025 Sakharov prize winner, has been freed after five years in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-611417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}