Former political prisoner and volunteer of the Homiel branch of the Viasna Human Rights Centre, Sviatlana Yakubovich, has described how dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s regime persecuted her and her husband — political prisoner Stanislau Machalau, who was not released — and how she herself was taken to freedom.
The full interview was published by Homiel Viasna (recorded by A. Yurevich). Yakubovich was among the 25 political prisoners freed on 16 September 2026 after talks between U.S. special envoy John Coale and Lukashenka. Her husband was not on that list.
Taken after ten months of surveillance
She and her husband were detained around 7 a.m. on 31 October 2024 at the Homiel bus station — the day they returned from Vilnius. Across the country that day, people were seized on “treason” charges. Investigators tried to pin the same article on her for nine months, failed, and before charging her switched to “participation in an extremist formation” and two counts of “facilitating extremist activity” committed repeatedly.
“When I put it all together, I realise the KGB worked on us for about ten months. They secretly gathered information, wiretaps, video. And when they thought they had enough — they “took” us.”
Surveillance, she says, began with Stanislau after his release in December 2023 — around February 2024 — then covered both of them. Phones were tracked; conversations recorded. In September 2024 they and her mother (a Category II disability) were held all day at GUBOPiK while officers used their keys for a secret search: data copied from devices, nothing formally seized. At the later “official” search the same devices were taken and used in the case. Data from a phone stolen from her in Georgia was also presented as evidence — the handset itself never appeared in court.
“At the court’s discretion” — and a kitchen remark
Yakubovich helped political prisoners’ families: meetings, documents, vitamins for children. That was filmed. “There was no complete picture and no direct proof that I belonged to some ‘formation’ — Viasna or anything else — from those scraps,” she says. Judge Anatol Sotnikau decided otherwise: almost every “piece of evidence” came with the phrase “at the court’s discretion.”
Her husband was first charged with preparing a terrorist act (Art. 289) — over a kitchen remark about defending his home from people who “break into apartments like bandits.” A state expert called it ordinary talk. The KGB commissioned a second opinion from BSU professor Siarhei Liabiedzinski, known, she says, for paid expert reports that serve repression: on 50 pages he “found” terrorism. In court the defence got the first expertise recognised and the charge reclassified — but the sentence stood: Machalau — 4 years in a strict-regime colony, Yakubovich — 5 years. Plus fines of 550 base units each; seized belongings and money were supposedly applied to the fine and never returned.
In the colony, even letters to her husband were banned
In Homiel SIZO-3 the couple could not meet. In court they sat side by side, but were led out separately. In colony No. 4 she was first told she could write — then her mother reported that Stanislau was forbidden to write to her. From 2026, she was told, “yellows” (people on the “extremist” preventive register) from the same case may not correspond — kinship does not matter. There was no contact.
How the release worked: quarantine, Kaliadzichy, “You are free!”
Until the last moment they did not know if a release would happen. On Monday 14 September she was pulled from the medical unit: “Five minutes to pack!” Belongings and food went into a bag in a heap. Six women were held in “quarantine” until night so the factory shift would not see the departure. Documents, correspondence, photos of her mother, diaries, verdicts — almost everything was taken. Passports were returned only in Lithuania: a package handed to the Americans.
In the minibus — handcuffed, heads down: raise your head and you get a bag over it. They were taken not to a “KGB SIZO,” as the papers said, but to SIZO No. 1 in Kaliadzichy near Minsk. Cold rooms, cell transfers, no explanation of their status. Two days of waiting. Tuesday evening: mattresses, then bedding — a sign the talks were stalling. No night departure. At dawn a scrap of radio news: talks were “constructive,” but the “Belarusian side” complained Americans were “not meeting obligations.” They guessed: they would not be sent back, but the list would shrink. It did.
“Around nine, all 25 of us were loaded onto a bus. No handcuffs now, but heads still down. We rode to the border still as prisoners. At the exit from the Belarusian checkpoint Coale boarded the bus and said: ‘You are free!’ We raised our heads and clapped.”
“The women need to be freed”
Yakubovich speaks bitterly about how few women were released. Friends remain behind bars with critical health — “all they can offer is a painkiller.” Shifts of 14–20 days without days off; Sundays — “voluntary-compulsory,” one day off a month. Many have children outside who need a healthy mother.
And her husband — Stanislau Machalau — remains in the colony. Sviatlana is free. He is not.