Belarus has granted asylum to a suspect in the Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill, according to a Belarusian state-run news source.
Evan Neumann, 49, claims he faced political persecution in the United States and has “mixed feelings” about his exile in Belarus, which allotted him the right to stay in the country “indefinitely,” according to Belarus’s BelTA.
“I am glad Belarus took care of me. I am upset to find myself in a situation where I have problems in my own country,” he told BelTA, per the BBC. “I do not believe that I have committed any crime.”
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Neumann fled the U.S. last year and traveled to Ukraine shortly before being charged by federal authorities for his alleged participation in the Jan. 6 riot. Ukrainian authorities began pursuing him, so he traveled on foot to neighboring Belarus and had to contend with snakes and wild boars on the trek, he told BelTA. Federal authorities issued an arrest warrant for Neumann last December.
BelTA circulated footage of him with migration documents in his hand.
“Now you are completely under the protection of the Republic of Belarus,” a Belarusian official told him, according to the Washington Post.
Гражданин США Эван Ньюман получил статус беженца в Беларуси. Документ ему вручили в управлении по гражданству и миграции УВД Брестского облисполкома 22 марта 2022. https://t.co/kYYLn5zVKx pic.twitter.com/l1VrGFg6hY
— БЕЛТА (@beltanews) March 22, 2022
The Justice Department brought 14 charges against Neumann last year. The accusations against him include assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers; civil disorder; engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds; and entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon.
Neumann denied many of the accusations against him.
“One of the accusations was very upsetting. It is alleged that I hit a police officer. That is baseless,” he said, according to the BBC.
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Belarus has faced severe sanctions from the West for serving as a staging ground for Russia’s bloody offensive in Ukraine. The country enabled the Kremlin to encircle Ukraine and stash standoff weapons to launch missiles into Ukraine from territory to which Ukraine’s military does not have access.
Recently, NATO leaders have expressed concerns that Minsk is contemplating joining the war efforts by providing Moscow with troops and additional military aid.
