WARSAW, Poland — A well-known journalist who spent three years behind bars in Belarus has walked free following an international prisoner exchange involving 10 people, according to officials from multiple countries who announced the development Tuesday.
Andrzej Poczobut, who writes for Poland’s major newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza and serves as a prominent voice for Belarus’s Polish community, had been sentenced to eight years in prison in what critics called a politically driven prosecution.
Authorities arrested Poczobut in 2021, sparking condemnation across Europe. The European Union later honored him with the Sakharov Prize, its highest human rights recognition.
The prisoner release represents another example of U.S.-brokered exchanges that have characterized improving ties between Belarus’s capital and Western governments since President Trump began his second presidency.
According to a Polish Foreign Ministry representative, Belarus freed five prisoners, with three traveling to Poland in return for three individuals Poland sent to Belarus. The broader exchange involved additional nations and totaled 10 people.
Earlier this year in March, Belarus’s leader Alexander Lukashenko authorized the freedom of 250 political detainees as part of an agreement with Washington that resulted in the lifting of certain American sanctions.
Belarus, which maintains close ties with Russia, has endured years of international isolation. Lukashenko has controlled the country of 9.5 million people with authoritarian rule for over thirty years, facing repeated Western sanctions for human rights violations and for permitting Moscow to launch its 2022 Ukraine invasion from Belarusian soil.
On the social media platform X, John Coale, Trump’s special representative for Belarus, confirmed that three Polish citizens and two Moldovan nationals gained their freedom through the exchange.
“We thank Poland, Moldova, and Romania for their invaluable support in this effort, as well as President Lukashenka’s willingness to pursue constructive engagement with the United States,” Coale posted.
