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Appeal against Haydukow’s prison sentence to be heard in Supreme Court on August 27

An appeal against a prison sentence for young opposition activist Andrey Haydukow will be heard in the Supreme Court of Belarus on August 27, according to a human rights organization called Vyasna (Spring).

On July 1, a judge of the Vitsyebsk Regional Court sentenced Mr. Haydukow, currently 23, to one and a half years in prison, finding him guilty of attempting to “establish contacts with foreign intelligence agencies without signs of high treason,” an offense penalized under a recently adopted appendix to the Criminal Code’s Article 356.

Mr. Haydukow, a leader of an unregistered organization called the Union of Young Intellectuals, was initially charged with high treason, which carries penalties ranging from up to 15 years in prison to the death sentence.

The fifth-year student at the chemical engineering and technology department of Polatsk State University and fitter in charge of instrumentation at Naftan in Navapolatsk was arrested in Vitsyebsk on November 8, 2012.

Alyaksandr Antanovich, spokesman for the Committee for State Security (KGB) announced on November 13 that Mr. Haydukow had "gathered and passed political and economic information on the instructions of a foreign intelligence agency," and that he had been caught in the act of making a dead drop.

Mr. Haydukow’s trial began on June 12 and was held behind closed doors. His lawyer was prohibited from disclosing any information about the case against Mr. Haydukow or his trial.

In early July, the Belarus version of Russia’s tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda reported with reference to Alyaksandr Sidarovich, first deputy prosecutor of the Vitsyebsk region, that Mr. Haydukow attempted to contact the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and offer to pass sensitive information to it.

In August 2012, Mr. Haydukow wrote a letter to the CIA, which was intercepted by the KGB. The agency replied to Mr. Haydukow’s letter, misleading him into believing that he had been contacted by the CIA, said Mr. Sidarovich.

According to Aleh Barysevich, a senior investigator with the KGB’s Vitsyebsk regional office, the agency spent three months playing a “counterintelligence game” with the man. “We had to understand whether he was indeed ready to commit a crime or these were just some unfulfilled adolescent fancies,” he was quoted as saying. “He pursued the specific goal of establishing cooperation [with the CIA] and acting in the interests of this secret service.”

The KGB accused Mr. Haydukow of having offered to infect computers at Naftan with spyware.

Mr. Haydukow even made a dead drop in Vitsyebsk to collect his payment from the CIA, Mr. Barysevich said.

The young man became aware that his letter had never reached the CIA only a few days after his arrest, said Mr. Barysevich. //BelaPAN