The Lithuanian lawyer, Mantas Danielius, came to Our House practically right after the beginning of the campaign «NO Means NO» started by Our House in the March of 2022 to block participation of the Belarusian army in the war against Ukraine on Putin’s side and help Belarusian men avoid service in the army and exercise their right not to take up arms.

Mantas Danielius was detained on September 28, 2022, for two months, the maximum legal period of pre-trial detention. The basis for the detention was a statement to the police submitted by Olga Karach on June 9, 2022, in which she stated the facts and her suspicions that Mantas Danielius was involved in espionage and collaboration with the KGB of Belarus. Later, similar statements were submitted to the Lithuanian special services by other Belarusian organizations.

Mantas Danielius is suspected of «stealing, buying or gathering in another way and transferring information constituting a state secret of the Republic of Lithuania or other information of interest to foreign intelligence on the instruction of a foreign state or its organization.» The punishment for the charges is imprisonment for the term from 6 to 15 years.

Since September, 2022, Mantas Danielius was in prison, but in February he was released under house arrest. The first thing he tried to do was to spy on the Belarusian women human rights defenders again and even to pressurize and threaten them, so the women had to complain to the police once more.

On February 27, 2023, Mantas Danielius was newly arrested and taken to prison, this time till April 5, 2023. The pre-trial investigation against Mantas Danielius, started in collaboration with the State Security Department of Lithuania, is conducted by the officers of the Lithuanian Criminal Police Bureau and is headed by the Prosecutor’s Office of Vilnius district.

After Mantas Danielius’s arrest, the human rights defender and the director of the Lithuanian department of Freedom House, Vytis Jurkonis, started a witch hunt and victim blaming against the Belarusian women human rights defenders in exile, publicly saying on the Lithuanian Delfi portal that it was the guilt of the Belarusian women human rights defenders that the KGB was hunting them even in Lithuania.

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