In the course of Wednesday’s hearing, the prosecotion demanded that Pavlo Hryb get six-year term in a minimum-security penal colony, Russian activist Vladislav Ryazantsev said on Facebook.
In August 2017, Pavlo Hryb went missing in the Belarusian city of Homiel. He was allegedly kidnapped by the Russian Federal security Service (FSB). As it emerged later, Russia blacklisted him as a ‘terrorist’ for his criticizing the Kremlin’s policy on the Internet. In Homiel he met with the 17-year-old girl from Sochi who later confessed that the FSB exerted pressure on her. Later, Pavlo Hryb was ‘found’ arrested in Russia’s Krasnodar.
After a massive public outcry and diplomatic note, the Belarusian State Border Committee admitted the fact of his border crossing on August 24 and said Hryb had not violated anything. According to a Krasnodar court, the arrest warrant was issued on August 17 (i.e., before Pavlo Hryb crossed the Belarus-Ukraine border), when he was put on the international wanted list. According to the Russian side, Hryb asked his acquaintance to go off a bomb at a school assembly in Sochi. Ukraine says that the charge was forged.
In early February, Ukraine’s human rights envoy Liudmyla Denisova said that Pavlo Hryb was on the verge of life and death. “The 20-year-old political prisoner needs urgent heart surgery because his state of health is supercritical,” she stressed.
