Raman Pratasevich, a Belarusian journalist who was detained in Belarus in 2021 after the commercial flight he was on was forced to land in Minsk, has been handed a new felony charge and now faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
Prosecutors at the Minsk regional court on April 14 added a charge against Pratasevich and one of his co-defendants, Yan Rudzik, who is being tried in absentia.
They have now also been charged with "repetitively forming and leading an extremist group" over their running of the Lithuania-based Telegram channel called Belarus Golovnogo Mozga (Belarus of the Brain), which was also critical of the authoritarian ruler of Belarus, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, and his regime.
The high-profile case against the Poland-based Nexta Live Telegram channel, which extensively covered unprecedented protests against the official results of an August 2020 presidential election that the opposition and many Western countries say was rigged, started in mid-February.
Pratasevich, Rudzik, and a third co-defendant, Stsyapan Putsila, who like Rudzik is being tried in absentia, were previously charged with forming and leading an extremist group, insulting Lukashenka, plotting to seize power through unconstitutional means, discrediting Belarus, financing extremist activities, inciting social hatred, organizing mass disorder, conducting acts of terrorism, and other actions aimed at undermining national security.
Those charges carried a potential maximum sentence of 15 years.
Putsila was additionally charged with orchestrating the activities of a terrorist organization.
The court on April 14 adjourned the trial until April 19.
State-run media had reported that Pratasevich pleaded guilty to all previous charges. It is not known how he pleaded to the new charge.
Pratasevich, who used to work as an editor and a key administrator of the Nexta Live channel on Telegram, fled Belarus in 2019.
In May 2021, he and his then-girlfriend, Russian citizen Sofia Sapega, were arrested after their commercial flight from Greece to Lithuania was forced to land in Minsk.
Belarus said it had ordered the plane to land after an anonymous bomb threat. Evidence later revealed that Belarusian officials conspired to fake the bomb threat as a pretense for diverting the plane so they could detain the pair.
Sapega was accused of administering a channel on Telegram that published the personal data of Belarusian security forces and sentenced to six years in prison in May last year. Earlier this week, officials at the Russian Embassy in Minsk said Sapega will be extradited to Russia soon.
Pratasevich made several appearances on Belarusian state television in 2021 that prompted the opposition and Western officials to accuse Lukashenka and his regime of extracting video confessions through torture. The officials also called for Pratasevich and Sapega's immediate release.
In 2017-2018, Pratasevich was a Vaclav Havel Journalism fellow in the Czech capital, Prague. The Vaclav Havel Journalism Fellowship -- a joint initiative of RFE/RL and the Czech Foreign Ministry -- is awarded to aspiring independent journalists in the European Union's Eastern Partnership countries and Russia. Pratasevich did not work for RFE/RL either before or after obtaining the fellowship.
Lukashenka has denied stealing the election and has since cracked down hard on the opposition, whose leading members have been jailed or forced to flee the country in fear for their safety.