“I'm open if the ICC wants to interview me. I am one of the victims,” says Kanstantsin Staradubets, one of the estimated 300,000 people forced out of Belarus following the protests against the capture of elections in 2020. He works for Viasna, a Belarusian human rights organisation, and is now based in Lithuania. It was evidence presented by Lithuania to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2024 that enabled the court in The Hague to open first a preliminary examination into the alleged deportations from Belarus into the small Baltic state. On March 12, the ICC prosecutor has finally decided to open a full investigation.
Prosecutors will be focused on “crimes against humanity, such as deportation… and persecution through deportation against any identifiable group or collectivity on political grounds”, committed since May 2020, according to the brief analysis made public by the court’s Office of the Prosecutor. They say that “the alleged forced deportation of individuals was caused by a coercive environment allegedly created by the Belarusian authorities within the territory of Belarus… against actual or perceived opponents of the Government of Belarus… pursuant to or in furtherance of a State policy”. Additional factors that lead to “the conclusion that the crimes committed by the authorities were encouraged or approved by the highest levels of the Government” are the use of the judiciary to suppress dissent and the lack of accountability for the crimes allegedly committed. And the Office of the Prosecutor says “the large-scale commission of the crimes, the number of victims, and the organised nature of the acts are all factors illustrating the widespread and systematic nature of the attack carried out by the authorities against actual or perceived political opponents from 1 May 2020 onwards”. The definition of a crime against humanity.
How did we get here?
Gabija Grigaite-Daugirde was deputy minister of justice when Lithuania referred the matter to The Hague. She’s now back in her day job as a professor of international law at Vilnius University. “Neighbouring states,” she says, “are the first ones that feel the consequences of illegitimate regimes that violate fundamental human rights”. States like Lithuania are “the first to have to respond to all the humanitarian or political consequences; the first to give political support to opposition leaders, to afford secure places for people escaping the coercive environment in their country”.
Lithuania shares a 679km border with Belarus. Relations have been fractious for decades as the country's paths have diverged, with Vilnius joining the European Union and NATO, and Minsk becoming a close ally of Moscow. Part of the history of the impetus for Lithuania’s referral to the ICC was also to challenge the narrative being litigated in other courts that Lithuania does not respect international law. During 2021 Belarus is accused of having weaponised asylum seekers from across Africa and Asia, dropping them into the deep forests that link the two countries and encouraging them to cross the border in search of freedom in the EU. Lithuania faced international criticism and legal action about its methods of border security.
It's a “huge issue”, confirms Marieke de Hoon of the University of Amsterdam, who has visited the country regularly, with “migrants being pushed into their [Lithuanian] territory” and the pushback. “For Lithuanians, partly because of having to face up to those allegations of violating the European Convention on Human Rights, they also want to share the other part of that story”. In contrast to the proceedings in Strasbourg at the European Court of Human Rights, “Lithuanians also want a platform to say, ‘let's not narrow in on this situation, where we may or may not have done something wrong, but also look at the real root causes, which we believe is an actual problem for Europe and an issue that international justice should address’.”
And that is Belarus. “Lithuanians told me”, says De Hoon, “‘We've been seeing the situation unfold in Belarus for many years, and we believe it's time for action’.”
Putting it more broadly, it’s about the “credibility of international law for states like Lithuania”, says Grigaite-Daugirde. “That credibility begins with how effective it is, how often it is used by states, how often it is defended. How often states have political will to stand for fundamental values of international law to be defended, and forming the state practice, allowing us to conclude that actually international law works.”
Also, she says, the government, “had no other choice”. After providing humanitarian refuge for the victims of the Lukashenko regime, it had to think about “how to do something that actually would hit the regime itself, that would shed light on the cruel practices that are happening within Belarus. Because when you have very closed countries like Belarus or Russia, it is very difficult to get the actual information, to verify the actual information [on what] is happening”.
Testing the waters
So Lithuania, with the backing of the Belarus opposition outside the country, submitted their detailed dossier with both testimonies and legal analysis. The ICC prosecutor came back to them, according to informed sources who preferred not to be named, to ask for more. NGOs made their own submissions. One of the players in the Belarus accountability landscape is the Danish-backed International Accountability Platform for Belarus (IAPB) – a coordinating body run by four main NGOs and with a substantial database. “We submitted a very comprehensive package of information and evidence to the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC in January 2025 and have since produced four additional submissions in support of the preliminary examination”, says Andrea Huber, the managing director of IAPB.
Information provided by NGOs to the Lithuanian authorities “was the beginning”, says Grigaite-Daugirde, Based on that evidence, “you start having discussions with people that have knowledge, that have experience, you test the ideas”. And because Belarus is not a member state of the ICC, “you understand that you also have to test the waters in the way you can make the referral”. What was crucial was making the analysis of the ‘transboundary’ nature of the alleged crimes, that they may have begun in Belarus, but with the forced deportation of political opponents to an ICC member state – Lithuania – they could come under the ICC’s radar.
“We have to rely on this so-called ‘creative jurisdictional hook’”, says Grigaite-Daugirde. “We understood what our possibilities are and what our limitations are. We understood that we have to talk about all these transboundary crimes, with the elements that we could have in our territorial jurisdiction. So that is why our main focus was on deportation and persecution” – the crimes the ICC prosecutor’s assessment focuses on. “But we also say that other crimes could be taken into consideration if they can be tied to the broader campaign of deportation and persecution.”
The ICC Office of the Prosecutor also had to consider complementarity and be sure that neither Lithuania, nor Belarus itself, via any investigations and potential trials were looking at the same crimes – which would question the court’s jurisdiction as a court of last resort. “Available information,” says the Office of the Prosecutor, “indicates that no investigations have been initiated in Belarus or in other countries in relation to deportation or persecution by means of deportation of actual or perceived opponents in Lithuania.”
Grigate-Daugirde says Lithuania made a special effort for the court to understand “very clearly, the contextual, legal, and political context, the way the Lukashenko regime operates, what is its modus operandi, and save time for the court. Because we really wanted this decision to be as thoroughly delivered as possible, and of course, as soon as possible”. In her view, the decision by the ICC “opens totally new doors for international justice, because suddenly all the regimes that seem to be out of [its] jurisdictional reach” may no longer be.
The release of political prisoners
The timing of the prosecutor’s announcement is significant. Things have been dramatically shifting in Belarus’ relationship with international powers over the last year. Although still heavily sanctioned by the European Union, the United States has a special envoy to Minsk who has negotiated several major political prisoner releases.
In June last year Syarhei Tsikhanouski, Belarus’ most famous political prisoner, was one of those released. It was his arrest that had pushed his wife Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya to run for office. Although internationally acknowledged as having won the 2020 election, after threats she left the country to lead the opposition from abroad. At Tsikhanouski’s first press conference in Vilnius on 22 June 2025 he was a gaunt shadow of his former bearded stocky self. Weighing only 79 kilos, he described the torture he had suffered as “inhuman, a nightmare,” with long periods in isolation, receiving no letters for almost three years, and being denied phone calls. The tiny punishment cells had no mattress, sheets, or pillows, he said.
In return for what did the Trump administration negotiate? Analysts say it’s all about Belarus’ status as a major player in the potash production field, a key ingredient in fertiliser production.
“It's extremely important for the world to hear about torture from Lukashenko's political rival, his personal enemy probably”, says Viasna’s Staradubets. But the Belarus opposition also points out that for all the now hundreds of releases over the past year, new people are being arrested. According to Viasna, there are currently more than 900 political prisoners in Belarus. Partly because of the releases, the human rights NGOs are being kept busy: “By now, we have interviewed over 3,300 victims and witnesses, who provided 36,800 documents,” says Huber. “Moreover, we have collected over 2 million open-source files from over 1,100 sources, and we are regularly archiving information in order to preserve relevant information.”
The UN Human Rights Council also has a group of independent experts working on Belarus. In February they reported on detainees being beaten, “subjected to electric shocks, and even threatened with rape – not only against themselves but also against their family members”.
What’s emerging from those released, says Staradubets, is that “the level and the amount of brutality depends on the specific prison authorities of one specific prison and it can differ a lot. From what we know, political prisoners are not being regularly physically tortured anymore. They are beaten sometimes. They are discriminated against in comparison with other prisoners. They are isolated in terms of information or contacts with other prisoners, their families, their lawyers. That is still the case, it is routine, it is the system. Also nutrition, access to healthcare, many other things like doing sports or doing hobbies, is mostly banned for political prisoners. It's not textbook torture, but this treatment creates unbearable conditions. We heard stories from the prisoners that were released last week that some of the political prisoners they saw were in such a bad condition psychologically that they feared for their sanity and their lives. it's more than disturbing, it is horrible.”
Now the ball is with Poland
The ICC says: “The scope of the situation now under investigation encompasses any past and present allegations of crimes committed since 1 May 2020 in the Republic of Belarus, where at least one part of the crime has been committed on the territory of Lithuania”.
That’s because the referral has not been joined by any other country. But in fact, the majority of Belarusians outside the country are in neighbouring Poland.
“On several occasions," says Grigaite-Daugirde, “I had the possibility to discuss whether this Lithuanian referral has only purely politically symbolic value. It was not, I would say, always an easy discussion.” What she means is that Lithuania was not able to convince its neighbours to join their referral. Now though, with the decision of the ICC, “it is clear that it is not purely politically symbolic”, she argues. “Understanding that this referral has actually already created legal consequences and will create even more hardships or negative outcomes for Lukashenko regime in the end”. So “it is important that jurisdictions or countries that have this still huge number of Belarusian people who are actually victims of Lukashenko’s regime, and who have experienced this massive systematic human rights violations” collect evidence for the court because “the more information is being submitted to the court, the higher probability is that it actually covers [what] is still happening in Belarus. They let Lithuania test the waters alone. So Lithuania tested the waters. Lithuania did its job. I think now it's time also to contribute to Lithuanian efforts”.
Staradabuts agrees that it is “very important to make Polish authorities see that they should join. They should allow the investigation to work with the victims in Poland. Because there are much more Belarusians in Poland who probably know details of their torture”.
Showing the involvement of the highest leaders
One of the key questions will be who the ICC decides can be held responsible for the policies that have resulted in the alleged crimes. Huber cautions that information from victims on the higher levels of perpetrators is not always easily obtainable. “For understandable reasons, victims are more likely to have information on direct perpetrators who they encountered themselves, and who are often lower or mid-level”. “The ICC concentrates on the higher level of command and people that, actually, have a role in the state policy framework and in all the criminal acts that are being committed,” says Grigaite-Daugirde. “What we did, we tried to show the system, the pattern of deportation and persecution, so that it is clear that it could not happen without the involvement of the highest leaders of Lukashenko's regime. We wanted, to have this big picture being put in a very clear legal context, so the gravity and the state policy is being reflected.”
LUKASHENKO ON TRIAL IN THE HAGUE (BUT NOT THE ICC)?
Professor of International Criminal Law Marieke de Hoon says that in the creation of the new Special Tribunal for Aggression against Ukraine one of the important issues was the question of whether it would be “limited to accused from Russia that could be held responsible for committing this crime of aggression or whether would be all actors, including Belarus” involved in committing the crime of aggression against Ukraine. In her view “Belarus was an actual party, because you cannot offer your territory to an aggressor state and have them commit that aggression through your state. That's not aiding and abetting, it's actually a full-on commission of a crime”. Andrea Huber, of IAPB, though notes that the new Tribunal’s jurisdiction is limited to the crime of aggression against the Ukrainian state, which means it “does not have a mandate to address torture, unlawful detention, sexual violence or other crimes committed against Belarusians. So, this (new) tribunal will not provide justice or reparations to Belarusians”.
