MINSK -- Belarusian Committee of State Security (KGB) has added imprisoned journalist Henadz Mazheyka to its list of alleged terrorists.
Mazheyka was sentenced to three years in prison in March for writing an article about a deadly raid by KGB officers on a Minsk apartment in September 2021.
Vyasna (Spring) human rights group said on June 29 that Mazheyka was among several other persons added to the list, bringing the total number of individuals on the list to 1,073, of whom 322 are Belarusian citizens.
Mazheyka, a former correspondent for the Belarusian edition of the Moscow-based Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, was sentenced in late March after a Minsk court found him guilty of allegedly inciting social hatred and insulting authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka.
Mazheyka was arrested in October after he was extradited from Russia. He was initially charged with inciting social hatred. Investigators said later they had found audio material with Mazheyka's voice "insulting Lukashenka" and filed an additional charge against the journalist.
Mazheyka is one of dozens of Belarusians detained across the country on similar charges related to a shooting in Minsk in late September 2021, in which an IT worker and a KGB officer were killed.
Little is known about the shooting, during which Andrey Zeltsar, an employee of the U.S.-based EPAM Systems IT company, allegedly shot dead KGB officer Dzmitry Fedasyuk before being himself killed.
The arrests were connected to comments posted on social media about the incident. Multiple individuals have received prison terms on charges related to comments about the incident.
Belarusian authorities blocked Komsomolskaya Pravda's website after Mazheyka published an article about Zeltsar.
In the article, a classmate of Zeltsar remembers him as a decent person.
Authorities claimed at the time that "an especially dangerous criminal" had opened fire on security officers after they showed up at his apartment looking for "individuals involved in terrorist activities."
Lukashenka has issued thinly veiled threats to people who post comments on social media praising Zeltsar and criticizing Fedasyuk.