Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor

On October 7, 2024, Vladimir Balandin, a citizen of Belarus under our legal protection, contacted HCAV. V. Balandin was informed that he was going to be extradited to the Belarusian authorities.

According to the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia, domestic legislation and international treaties and conventions ratified by the Republic of Armenia, no one can be extradited to a foreign country, even if it is the country of the person's citizenship, if there are serious grounds for suspecting that in that state, the person may be subjected to torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Today, the Republic of Armenia decided the fate of V. Balandin. that is, extradite an innocent person to a state that is subject to Putin's regime and whose legal punishment is the death penalty.

We condemn the approach of the RA authorities and demand to immediately change that inhumane decision.

Let us remind, that a criminal prosecution has been initiated against V. Balandin in Belarus under Article 211 of the Criminal Code. The criminal case was initiated because V. Balandin participated in the actions of disobedience. V. Balandin was in prison in Armenia from March 10, 2024, and on April 10, the RA General Prosecutor's Office received a petition to extradite V. Balandin.

Already on May 31, 2024, the General Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Armenia made a decision to allow the extradition, noting that the General Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Belarus provided guarantees for the protection of Balandin's rights and freedoms provided for by international treaties.

Thus, the General Prosecutor’s Office of the RA, ignoring the facts of massive and inhumane violations of human rights in Belarus (there are hundreds of reports, statements by international organizations, institutions, and individual states), takes as a basis the obviously false, groundless assurances of the General Prosecutor's Office of the dictatorial regime about the guarantees and makes a decision to allow the extradition.

The efforts of HCAV to protect V. Balandin in domestic courts had no results; both the Appellate and Cassation Courts rejected our appeals. The Republic of Armenia considers that leaving the life and fate of an innocent person to the discretion of a dictatorial state is acceptable. We declare that the decision of the RA General Prosecutor’s Office, after the meeting of the General Prosecutor’s offices of Belarus and RA in Yerevan on October 3, 2024, to extradite V. Balandin, who is being illegally persecuted by the dictatorial regime of Belarus, is illegal. The decision was exclusively made as a result of some political agreements, which by their nature are devoid of any human value and contradict the obligations taken by RA as a member state of the Council of Europe. The RA authorities will bear direct responsibility for the violation of V. Balandin's rights in Belarus, including torture, death penalty, or while being in a Belarusian prison possible torture, deterioration of health, other accidents or suicide.