Balkan prisoner

Serbia wants to give Belarus the director Andrei Gnet. He was arrested at the request of Interpol, involuntarily helping totalitarian regimes hunt enemies

- I will return to Belarus only as a lifeless body. They will not receive me, ”says director Andrei, he is oppressing.

The decision on his extradition to Belarus from Serbia has already been made. Now he is waiting for a decision of the Court of Appeal, sitting under house arrest after seven months in the central prison of Belgrade. He is not going to give up alive.

"Western puppeteer"

Andrei Gnet - one of the most successful Belarusian advertising directors - is well known in the world: he shot videos for many large Western companies. However, with all the attributes of a successful life, a successful representative of the creative class of oppression has always been civilian. He participated in protests, ran away from riot police, said what he was thinking. And in 2020 he moved to the category of those whom Lukashenko calls the "Western puppeteers of the opposition." Andrei "puppeted" Belarusian athletes.

In August 2020, when all Belarus began to protest, Andrei, along with the basketball player Elena Levchenko and the gandbox coach Konstantin Yakovlev, came up with a free association of athletes (SOS_by). Then at night in mid -August the new association had a secret meeting in the office of a familiar lawyer. The special services were probably still not up to the athletes: they hunted participants in the first protests, and no one paid attention to a large number of two -meter people in multi -colored tracksuits.

-I then told them: “Guys, I'm not an athlete, I am a director, but I want to do something. I tried to gather directors, but there are only a few people. There are few of us, no one knows us, we cannot. And everyone knows and loves you. You have a lot, you have an impeccable reputation, you can become a locomotive. We will be able to demoralize the dictator so much that it will not seem to him little. Let's do something while people are beaten in prisons. ” They agreed. And we created an association. One very cool designer made us a brilliant logo - five Olympic rings in the form of a word SOS.

Andrei uploaded videos with athletes calls on Instagram from the cottage of relatives - for conspiracy. For ten months he created and exposed hard videos. The propagandists said: look, these athletes speak as written, someone is standing behind them, someone is preparing them. And this was director Andrei Gnet, whom ten months could not calculate.

On June 14, 2021, he discovered a summons in the mailbox: he was called to the Investigative Committee. There was no print or signature on that agenda, and she looked almost a fake.

Andrei called two acquaintances of lawyers, and those, without saying a word, told him the same thing: this is a black mark, you have a couple of hours to gather and leave. June 2021 is already a large terror in Belarus. Daily arrests, defeat independent media, courts and sentences. There were no more flags in the city. Those who did not leave before were gathered in a hurry. The oppression did not have a Schengen visa, and the only thing that occurred to him was to go to Moscow. The big city, he thought, was easy to get lost, and reliable friends outside Belarus were in Moscow. He left - with a small road bag, gathered in two hours, as the lawyers advised.

Two emigrations and one extradition

In the first emigration - in Russia - Andrei Gneta lived for six months. And in December, he went to Thailand on vacation. I planned to spend two months there. The return ticket was on February 25, 2022.

On February 24, reading the news, he first said to himself "no, no, no, this cannot be." And then he sat on the motorcycle and went to the immigration office. There has already gathered a turn of Russians and Ukrainians. He was oppressed by the only Belarusian who rose in the turn.

He extended his visa for two months. He called the airline and changed the tomorrow's departure date for open. He had two months of a legal stay in the country for reflection, what to do next.

-At some point, I thought: what, in fact, reflecting on? Since 2006 I have been going to Thailand constantly, as in the country. I know everything here, here is my place. I am a director, I can fly to the shooting from here anywhere. And I can engage in “subversive activities” from anywhere in the world. Why rack your head? I stayed in Thailand.

In October 2023, Andrei flew to shoot in Serbia. Product company examined three places for filming: Georgia, Turkey and Serbia. Ironically, the director insisted on Serbia: a few months before he had already visited there - in August he took a very beautiful video for the Danon concern. Andrei liked in Serbia, and it was decided to shoot the video in the city of Novi-Sad.

At the Belgrade Airport, where the director flew from Thailand on October 30, they fiddled with his passport for a long time. At first, one border guard, then another joined her. We knocked on the keyboard, drove something, called somewhere. And then the policeman came and said: "Come with me."

Andrei recalls that at that moment two hemispheres fought intensively in his head. One thing said: well, they caught up with you. Another answered: Come on, I'm not some Julian Assange to have a hunt for me.

This struggle was eight hours, while Andrei was kept in a tight room with migrants. During this time, no one told him what was the matter. They answered all questions: wait.

Eight hours later, a policeman came up and asked Andrei a lawyer had. And then he realized that something serious and terrible was happening. Of course, he had no lawyer to shoot a Christmas video for several days. The policeman said: ask your friends "outside" to urgently look for a lawyer. Andrei wrote messages to producers and assistant. Somewhat miraculously in the late evening, they found two lawyers. He will meet them that evening in court.

But first he was taken from the airport to the police station. It was there that Andrei Gnete found out that a request from Belarus had come from Belarus to his detention and extradition. Police, he recalls, talked with him sympathetically. They said: understand, we have no complaints about you at all, and if we could let you go, we would have done it immediately, but this is an Interpol request.

Judge Anna Milosevich sat in a small smoky office. From the very beginning, they did not succeed. Andrei talked about the protests of 2020, about repressions, about the unification of athletes, about the hunting of the KGB for caring Belarusians. The judge interrupted him: “Why are you always saying“ KGB ”? Can you say a normal name? " Andrey replied: "KGB." The judge irritably said: “I know that there was a KGB in the USSR. And now what is the name of the secret service? " Andrei repeated: "KGB." Anna Miloshevich turned to the lawyers: "Is that true?" Lawyers confirmed.

Quarantine, Hayatt and Jungle

In the end, the judge decided to conclude Andrei Gneta in custody. She said that if Belarus did not send documents within 40 days, he will be released. The director could not believe that he had to spend 40 days in prison. He did not know that in fact there is much more.

“When I was brought to the central prison of Belgrade (centrali shutter), two local police officers said: do not worry, no one will offend you here,” Andrei recalls. -I thought that they would immediately begin to beat me, rape, break my arms and legs. It turned out no. At night, they got into quarantine. And the next day they transferred to the camera. I must say, far from the worst - bright and quite spacious. This in local jargon is called Hayult. There is also a “jungle”, it’s better not to get there. The decision on who to send to which camera is made by the deputy head of the prison Nikolich. Good man, by the way. He personally communicates with every new prisoner and decides where to send him. And by the way, he speaks well in English.

Worse than the “jungle”, only a prison hospital told the new prisoner. This is a terrible place, experienced convicts said, it’s better not to get there. So if you get sick, be silent.

Either you die or recover. But in the hospital you die soon, they will not treat there anyway.

Therefore, the whole camera was sick secretly by Covid. No one recognized anything.

Andrei was shocked by some features of the Serbian prison on the first day. When he was given a plastic plate and a spoon, and no mug or glass. It turned out that the prisoners were not laid for drinking. You can buy a plastic mug in a prison store when money is already in the account. A visit to the store is allowed twice a week. In the meantime, there is no money - at least put your hand with a bucket to drink.

The cellmates initially accepted him wary. I immediately realized that a person is not from the criminal world, but then who? Cossack? So he speaks in someone else's language. They asked and could not understand what kind of Molotov cocktail it was: athletes, director, dictatorship, Thailand - what does this mean and what connection? But then everyone understood everything: in prison, it doesn’t happen. And the head of the Montenegrin drug cartel, sitting in the same cell, generally respected Andrei: "My father fought for the independence of Montenegro, and you fight for the freedom of Belarus."

Andrei, and he also became a bastard in the chamber of the chef. The ration was scarce: in the morning tinted sweet water, called tea, and an apple or jam. Once a week - two hard -boiled eggs. In lunch - a loaf and a plate of cabbage or bean soup. But after he discovered bugs and worms in a plate, the Soup camera stopped (the guards laughed and said: “This is an additional protein!”). And for dinner - sour milk and a piece of corn tortilla. It is impossible to survive on a prison diet for adult men. Local prisoners were transferred. Andrei was not worn. A foreigner in prison is always more difficult. Only a visit to the store saves twice a week. But Life hacks, in the absence of the necessary, the brain produces quickly. And he grows the chef. He came up with.

He taped the belly with a lunch baton from a tin can and pulled out the whole crumb. The remaining crusts poured mayonnaise and ketchup from a firing, laid out tuna from canned food, compressed this sandwich, wrapped it in a cellophane bag and put it between the batteries. The heating in the prison was steam, it was included every day at six o’clock in the evening, and there were hot sandwiches to dinner at the camera, who even crunched. Once a week, when two cool eggs were given, Andrei stuffed them with what was at hand, but it was always tasty. And for patients, he came up with an elixir of health: he poured a ginger with boiling water, left to brew, then squeezed the juice of lemon and honey from the programs of the cellmates. It turned out a vitamin booster, and the whole camera, despite the weakened immunity, was able to avoid a prison hospital, even sick with a Covid. Socialists proposed to open the “CZ-cafe”. The Central Administration is, of course, the "centrali shutter." And for Andrei it was creativity.

In Serbia the Supreme Court is actually the lower

A lawyer who visited Andrei Gnet in prison immediately after the arrest, said: you need to wait for documents from Belarus. They came on November 15 last year. 30 pages of the text, appeal to the Ministry of Justice of Serbia from the General Prosecutor's Office of Belarus. The appeal began with the courteous assurances of the respected Serbian colleagues that no one is going to pursue Andrei Gneta for political reasons in his homeland, they will not be cruelly treated and generally all international norms will be met. In the same package there were excerpts from the criminal case - so Andrei generally found out about him.

In recent years, the Belarusian security forces have realized: they are well aware that requests for political articles (creating an extremist formation, mass riots - that threatens oppression) will not accept any interpol. And the best way to catch up and return the escaped is to blame him for an economic article. Andrei from the case file learned that in his homeland he was accused of tax evasion, Article 243 of the Criminal Code of Belarus.

- I was accused of incorrectly paid taxes from 2012 to 2018, violating the amendments to the Tax Code, which were adopted only in 2019! - says Andrey. “But I could not foresee that the legislation would change in the future.” In 2019, the Tax Code introduced the concept of “business crushing”: if you are a businessman and opened more than one company, but two, then by definition it means that you are crushing business. And in retroactively, I counted the entire revenue for six years another 20 percent of the VAT, and then they accused me of dodging this VAT, which, in accordance with the then legislation, should not pay at all. I laughed when I read all this, but at some point it was no longer laughing: it was written there that I “mislead the accountant,”-an accountant who died in 2016. However, when he finished reading, he calmed down. I realized that this is revenge - for athletes, for the fact that we have achieved the abolition of the World Hockey Championship in Belarus - and that I did not commit any crimes.

By the way, in cases of additional charges (even if you do not consider their illegality in this case, only the procedure), the tax inspectorate sends tax notifications. But at the address registration of Andrei Gnet, no papers came - neither notifications from the tax inspectorate, nor summons, nor letters. True, in February 2023, people in civilian clothes came to his mother, but there were then searches for many, including the athletes with whom he was connected.

It seemed that now the Belarusian regime could be the left for the director to pour salt on the tail.

Moreover, he moved freely around the world, removing advertising, and no one was chasing him. It turned out that they were still chasing.

Papers from Minsk came on November 15, and on December 7 a secret meeting of the Supreme Court was held (by the way, the Supreme Court is a court of first instance, then there is an appeal) on the extraction of the oppression. Nobody even notified either Andrei himself or his lawyers. Although, according to Serbian law, lawyers later explained to him, the court must hear the extradited person and his protection in order to establish whether there are any obstacles to extradition. In mid -December, Andrei simply received a court decision on extradition in prison. Lawyers immediately filed a complaint with the court of appeal, where all violations of Serbian legislation indicated, and on February 19, the court of appeal was held, which was actually working on errors: the court of first instance indicated procedural violations, and everything returned to the initial point - consideration of the issue of extradition from zero.

- Then there were two court sessions - March 26 and April 1. Each lasted four hours. I said that it was impossible to stop me. And he did not say anything on his own behalf. Everything was supported by quotes and links. For example, I did not claim that there are political prisoners in Belarus, but said: “As follows from the report of the UN specialist in Belarus Anas Marin, there are political prisoners in Belarus.” I had all the resolutions of the European Union and the Council of Europe. In total, I attached about 200 pages to my performances. The court needed two months to read all this, and on May 31 the Supreme Court ruled that all the conditions for my extradition were met, and there were no obstacles. I received the decision on June 13. Now we have appealed. How much to wait for consideration is unknown. But I, at least now under house arrest, and not in the cell.

In the next life - only a Serbian lawyer

In the Serbian epic, the courts of the first and second instance seemed to play the roles of a good and evil policeman. Simultaneously with the decision on extradition on May 31, the Supreme Court refused Andrei Gneta in translated under house arrest. And on June 5, the Court of Appeal decided to change the preventive measure and transfer it under house arrest. Lawyers found an apartment for him.

- If you behave well in this life, then in the next you may be lucky to be born a Serbian lawyer. My lawyers found me an apartment about four times more expensive than its market value. The usual rental of such an apartment costs 400 euros per month, but I pay 1,500 euros for it, I calculate directly with lawyers.

One visit to prison for 15 minutes - 400 euros. A simple formal hearing like the appeal that lasted 20 minutes costs 1000 euros. Hearing in the highest court - 7000 euros.

How much they will put up for the appeal - I can’t even imagine (they have not yet presented the bill).

The transfer to house arrest looked like this: 15 minutes for fees (all the cellmates dumped notes with the numbers of the phones that you need to call - from the Belgrade prison you can take out anything, no tests at the exit), paper with address in your hands and warning that you need to get to the place of house arrest in an hour. If more time is a violation of the regime and a return back to jail. Andrei went out of the gates of the prison - having a piece of paper with his address, a discharged phone and without money. Выручили полупьяные местные жители в ближайшей забегаловке, перед которыми Гнёт изобразил заблудившегося туриста, — они отвезли его до того самого дома, в котором Гнёт живет теперь в ожидании апелляции.

На ноге у Андрея электронный браслет. Браслет фиксирует передвижения: выходить из дома можно на один час в день. Зато на «входящий трафик» никаких ограничений нет: к Андрею могут приходить гости. Кто угодно и в любом количестве. «Я могу позвать ансамбль с медведями, и это не будет нарушением режима домашнего ареста», — говорит Андрей. Он вообще изо всех сил бодрится, храбрится и шутит. Ест борщ, который приносят правозащитники. И снова повторяет, что живым в теперешнюю Беларусь не вернется.

КОММЕНТАРИЙ ЮРИСТА
Алесь Михалевич — белорусский юрист, кандидат в президенты на выборах 2010 года. После перевода из СИЗО под подписку о невыезде он смог бежать из Беларуси. В 2012 году его самого задерживали в аэропорту Варшавы по запросу Интерпола. Польша — не Сербия, польским властям понадобилось всего восемь часов, чтобы разобраться и освободить Михалевича. Сейчас он — член Чешской адвокатской палаты и Европейской ассоциации адвокатов по уголовным делам. Его бюро специализируется именно на защите людей, необоснованно преследуемых по линии Интерпола и через другие механизмы международного розыска.

— И Беларусь, и Россия являются полноценными членами Интерпола, и сотрудничество продолжается. Нужно понимать, что Интерпол — вторая по величине после ООН международная организация. Туда, разумеется, входят и тоталитарные, и авторитарные государства в большом количестве. И общий стандарт для Интерпола намного ниже, чем, к примеру, для Совета Европы, куда Россия уже не входит, а Беларусь и не входила никогда. Конечно, внутри Европы стандарты намного более высокие, чем общемировые. Есть страны Азии, есть страны Африки — и это чаще всего диктаторские режимы. Если Китай и Россия являются постоянными членами Совета безопасности ООН, то странно было бы требовать от Интерпола неких повышенных стандартов. Так что не стоит удивляться тому, что Интерпол, куда входит большинство недемократичных стран, принимает запросы из Беларуси, России, Китая, Ирана. К слову, пока Лукашенко не стал фасилитатором нелегальной миграции, он вполне устраивал даже Евросоюз по вопросам борьбы с наркотрафиком, нелегальной миграцией и торговлей людьми.

Есть процедуры. К примеру, по экстремистским статьям гражданин Беларуси или России в интерполовский розыск не попадет — он не пройдет сито проверок. Но если статья заявлена экономическая — запросто. Конечно, вряд ли Беларусь хоть кого-нибудь получит назад. И Гнёта никто ей не выдаст в конце концов. Но государство упорно выполняет процедуры. В 2021 году Беларусь подавала Светлану Тихановскую в интерполовский розыск, и хотя было очевидно, что никто не примет этот запрос, его всё равно готовили и посылали. Нужно понимать, что отдел Интерпола — это часть МВД Беларуси. Там сидит майор или подполковник, который знает: если он не направит в Интерпол запрос — его накажут. Но если Интерпол не примет этот запрос — это уже не его, майора, проблемы. Так что не нужно романтизировать Интерпол.