Belarus widens amnesty eligibility for first-time drug offenders

Belarus widened amnesty eligibility for people with no previous convictions when its anniversary amnesty took effect on 8 May 2025. Eligible prisoners and people serving restriction of liberty could seek relief under a law that included a one-year sentence-reduction route.

The anniversary law followed a sentencing reform

The amnesty marked eighty years since victory in the Second World War. Parliament’s lower house approved the bill on 30 April, the upper house approved it on 2 May, and President Alexander Lukashenko signed it four days later.

It followed March’s criminal-code reform, which had expanded sentencing choices for personal drug offences and basic supply.

The two changes reached people at different stages. The code set the sentences courts could impose; the amnesty provided relief for eligible offences committed before it took effect.

First convictions could clear a drug-offence exclusion

The law’s drug exclusions contained an exception for people with no previous convictions across the main personal-possession and supply offences. These covered the first four parts of the criminal code’s principal drug offence.

The first-conviction exception stopped before the separate offence for supply causing death. Other exceptions addressed people who offended as minors and specified parents, under their own conditions.

The practical question for an applicant was therefore which offence they had committed, their personal circumstances and which form of amnesty they qualified for.

Relief depended on the route and the individual case

Minsk lawyer Kristina Asryan explained that the law allowed several forms of relief: full release, a one-year reduction, conditional release and substitution of a lighter punishment.

Its exclusions included unpaid compensation, serious misconduct while serving a sentence, certain repeat offending after earlier clemency and inclusion on the state’s extremism list. The law also restricted particular forms of relief through additional conditions.

Authorities responsible for enforcing sentences, courts and supervision bodies applied the amnesty individually. The implementation period ran for six months, through 7 November 2025.

The criminal offences remained the starting point

After the March reform, personal possession could receive short custody, restriction of liberty for up to five years or prison for two to five years. Basic supply could receive restriction of liberty for three to five years or prison for three to eight.

Those ranges continued to shape new cases, while the amnesty offered eligible people relief from existing punishment. Belarus’s profile records the continuing penalties and the separate opportunity for amnesty consideration.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}