An American who has fled to Belarus has been indicted on charges of assaulting police officers and other crimes related to the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Evan Neumann, 49, was indicted in Washington on December 10 on 14 criminal counts. The indictment expands on charges originally contained in a criminal complaint filed against Neumann in March.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington said in a news release that by the time the initial complaint was filed, Neumann had already fled the United States and is currently believed to be in Belarus. The FBI is investigating the case and a warrant has been issued for his arrest, the news release said.
Neumann was interviewed last month by the state-controlled Belarus-1 television channel. He said he had followed the advice of his lawyer and fled to Europe.
He stayed in Switzerland and Italy for some time and then went to Ukraine for four months. In August, Neumann was detained by Belarusian border guards for illegally crossing from Ukraine.
According to Neumann, he decided to flee to Belarus and seek political asylum there after Ukraine's security services started expressing interest in him.
The U.S. doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Belarus. The State Department last month declined to comment on the case citing privacy laws.
The riot at the Capitol attempted to interrupt a joint session of the U.S. Congress that was in the process of certifying President Joe Biden’s victory over then-President Donald Trump in the November 3, 2020 election. The siege followed a rally near the White House earlier that day in which Trump called on his supporters to march on the Capitol in a last-gasp attempt to overturn the election results.
The indictment says that during the riot Neumann shoved a metal barricade into a line of officers and struck the officers with the barricade and with his fist. In his interview with Belarus-1, Neumann rejected the charges against him, calling them "political persecution."
Since the riot more than 700 people have been arrested for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol, including over 220 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement.
