Dzmitry Navazhylau is a Belarusian journalist who spent more than five years in prison in Belarus before being released on September 16, 2026, one of 25 prisoners freed from jail in Belarus after months of U.S. diplomatic efforts. He was immediately deported to Lithuania, according to the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ).
The former director of the news agency BelaPAN, Navazhylau was arrested in 2021 and handed a six-year sentence in October 2022 on charges of creating an extremist group and large-scale tax evasion.
Two other journalists – Andrei Aliaksandrau and Kyril Pazniak - were also freed on September 16 and deported to Lithuania.
The releases followed a meeting between Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and John Coale, U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy to Belarus who has been charged with securing the release of hundreds of people including human rights campaigners, political activists, journalists and lawyers.
Case history
Navazhylau served as director of BelaPAN, Belarus’ largest and oldest independent news agency, from September 2018 to January 2021, when he resigned from the position, according to news reports. BelaPAN extensively covered the mass protests that broke out across Belarus following Lukashenko’s disputed election victory in August 2020.
In January 2021, police searched BelaPAN’s Minsk headquarters in connection with a criminal investigation into former deputy director Aliaksandrau and confiscated documents and the hard drive of the editorial office’s main server, according to U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).
On August 18, 2021, officers from the Belarusian Investigative Committee searched Navazhylau’s home, the homes of five of the agency’s employees, and BelaPAN’s editorial offices. They took Navazhylau in for questioning.
Later that day, the Investigative Committee announced on Telegram that Navazhylau, along with BelaPAN director and editor Iryna Leushyna and the outlet’s accountant Katsyaryna Boeva, had been arrested on suspicion of organizing or participating in gross violations of public order.
On November 18, 2021, Radio Svaboda, the Belarusian-language service of RFE/RL, reported that Navazhylau, Leushyna, and Aliaksandrau had been charged with “creating an extremist group.”
On October 6, 2022, a court sentenced Navazhylau to six years in prison and fined him 22,400 Belarusian rubles (US$8,780). The court also handed down sentences of 14 years to Aliaksandrau and four years to Leushyna.
On January 6, 2023, the Belarusian Supreme Court upheld the sentences of Navazhylau, Aliaksandrau, and Leushyna, BAJ reported.
According to BAJ, Leushyna was released in December 2024 after completing her sentence.