STA, 3 June 2022 - Dzmitry Hleizer, an opponent of the regime of Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, has been detained in Slovenia based on an international arrest warrant, which the Belarus diaspora in Slovenia says was prompted by his taking part in anti-government protests in Belarus.
According to a report by the commercial broadcaster POP TV, Hleizer has been in detention since being apprehended in Slovenia in late April. After a hearing at the Kranj District Court on Thursday, he is waiting for a decision on his potential extradition to Belarus.
Alexandra Mamaeva, a representative of the Belarus people's embassy to Slovenia, told POP TV that if Hleizer was extradited he would not be given a fair trial in Belarus. She warned that regime opponents were being tortured in detention in her country.
Mamaeva said Hleizer was a victim of political persecution because he supported the opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in her bid for the presidential election and took part in protests against the Lukashenko regime.
He was detained in Belarus and was threatened and beaten for two days, with the authorities demanding he testify against his superior who fell into the regime's disfavour. Hleizer consented to testify, but fled to Spain after being released in March 2021.
Despite an arrest warrant issued against him by the Belarus authorities, ostensibly for bribery, the Spanish authorities did not arrest him in a year and a half.
However, when he arrived in Slovenia to pick up his mother-in-law, who had fled here from Ukraine, he was apprehended by Slovenian police in his hotel on 29 April.
After the hearing at the Kranj District Court, his defence counsel Erika Šlibar Mulej said they believed they had been able to prove Belarus's extradition demand was unfounded, which position was also taken by the prosecution.
A week ago, a Turkmenistan activist travelling with the Russian feminist protest punk rock band Pussy Riot was briefly apprehended by Slovenian police ahead of their concert in Ljubljana based a 20-year-old Interpol arrest warrant, before being released.
