Artsiom Anishchuk

sentenced to 3 years of imprisonment

Former prisoner

Date of birth: 20 June 1988

Date of detention: 29 September 2020

Charges indicted:

  • Part 2 of Art. 339 of the Criminal Code — Hooliganism committed by a group of persons
  • Art. 369 of the Criminal Code — Insulting a government official
  • Art. 411 — Malicious disobedience to the demands of administration of the correctional institution

Sentence: 3 years

Penalty: imprisonment in a general-security penal colony

Date of release: 18 May 2023

Judge: Viktar Shautsou, Kseniya Nikifarava

Artsiom Anishchuk is a defendant in the case of damaging the car of the police officer's wife. On February 3, 2021, Minsk Regional Court passed a verdict in the criminal case against five Minsk citizens. They were charged under Part 2 of Article 339 of the Criminal Code (malicious hooliganism). Judge Viktar Shautsou sentenced Artsiom to 24 months in a penal colony.

Artsiom reported torture and beating in the penal colony.

He was to have been released after serving his two-year term in full on June 29, 2022. However, Anishchuk was transferred from the colony to investigative prison No. 4 and taken into custody on a new criminal case under Article 369 of the Criminal Code. The case was brought against him for insulting a police officer in a private Telegram chat in September 2020.

On July 25, 2022, the Lieninski District Court of Mahilioŭ combined the sentences in two criminal cases and sentenced the political prisoner to a total of three years in a penal colony, two of which he had already served. 

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