Maksim ZNAK

Lawyer, academic, and writer Maksim Znak remained held incommunicado serving a 10-year sentence in a medium-security penal colony imposed on spurious national security grounds. Znak was the electoral campaign lawyer of opposition presidential candidates Viktar Babaryka and Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, and a member of the Coordination Council for the Transfer of Power, which called for the resignation of President Lukašenka following the disputed presidential election held in August 2020. 

Maksim Znak was arrested by members of the main investigative department of the Investigative Committee of Belarus at Viktar Babaryka’s election headquarters on 9 September 2020, and placed in pre-trial detention. He was subsequently charged with ‘inciting actions aimed at harming the national security of the Republic of Belarus’, ‘conspiring to seize power by unconstitutional means’ and ‘creating an extremist formation’, and tried alongside Maryia Kalesnikava, who headed Viktar Babaryka’s campaign team.  Their trial opened in Minsk on 4 August 2021 behind closed doors. They were both found guilty on 6 September 2021, with Znak receiving a 10-year sentence, and Kalesnikava 11 years in prison. In May 2022, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention called for his immediate and unconditional release. Znak was last seen by his lawyer in February 2023 (see Case List 2023/2024).  

Maksim Znak, born on 4 September 1981, is a lawyer, professor at the Law Faculty of the Belarusian State University, poet, and lyricist. While detained, Znak wrote Зекамерон (The Zekameron: One hundred tales from behind bars and eyelashes, Vremja, Moscow, 2022), in which he poignantly details his new everyday life.