„Andrzejus Poczobutas, a former political prisoner of the Aliaksandr Lukashenko regime, crossed the Polish border towards Belarus on Tuesday and is on the territory of this country,“ reports tvn24.pl.
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He himself confirmed this information to TVN “Fakty” and TVN24 journalist Piotr Kraska, stating that he is on the Belarusian side of the border.
A. Poczobutas was released at the end of April and from the very beginning claimed that he would return to Belarus. He confirmed the same last Saturday during a meeting of the Belarusian Polish Union board in Białystok.
“I am going to Belarus, home. Today’s meeting only confirmed that I must go to Belarus. To meet people, after all, I haven’t seen some of them for five years,” A. Poczobutas told journalists at the time, stating that he would leave as soon as next week.
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The well-known Polish and Belarusian journalist was freed through prisoner exchanges involving several countries. Warsaw then released the imprisoned Russian archaeologist Aleksandr Butyagin, who was wanted by Ukraine.
A. Poczobutas, a correspondent for the influential Polish newspaper “Gazeta Wyborcza” and one of the leaders of the Belarusian Polish minority, was serving an eight-year prison sentence in Belarus in a case condemned as politically motivated.
His imprisonment in 2021 received widespread condemnation across Europe, and later he was awarded the most prestigious European Union (EU) human rights prize – the A. Sakharov Prize.
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