Former Political Prisoner Igor Karney Had His Belarusian Passport Revoked

He ended up without legal documents in Portugal.

Former political prisoner and journalist Igor Karney, released under an agreement with the U.S. on June 21, 2025, remained in Portugal without a single legal document. He wrote about this on his Facebook account.

“A postcolonial homeless person: on the downside—no visa or passport; on the upside—a frozen ‘defense’ process.” Finally, even the last piece of paper that gave me at least some legitimacy in this world has expired. I’m talking about the Lithuanian national visa, which I received shortly after the June 2025 deportation—the first of a series of more or less large-scale deals in the trade of political prisoners,” — wrote Igor Karney.

The former political prisoner explained that at first he was unable to legalize his status through the family reunification program because he was required to provide a certificate of no criminal record. After that, he was forced to apply for international protection. During that time, it became known that his passport had been revoked in Belarus.

“And then the final blow—this time from a ‘crystal vase.’ It’s hard to say when this happened, but I found out when the first reports came in from colleagues who’d been deported: the bloody regime, as a little bonus of petty malice, invalidated his passport, even though it was valid until 2030.”

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