Belarus has granted asylum to a former Polish judge following espionage charges in Poland. In a decree granting citizenship to 257 people from 16 states Friday, President Alexander Lukashenko stated that Tomasz Szmydt faces political persecution in Poland.

Szmydt defected to Belarus in May and announced his resignation from the Warsaw Provincial Court in a press conference organized by the Belarus state media.

Following the defection, the Internal Security Agency of Poland announced the start of an investigation into the judge’s access to classified information, with fears of Szmydt being a key target of Russia’s intelligence activity.

When the reports of Szmydt’s request for political asylum emerged initially, the Provicial Administrative Court announced that it had requested the Supreme Court Administrative Office to take disciplinary action for breach of professional ethics rules in the Law on the Organization of the Common Courts.

Szmydt stated on X that the decision to request asylum was a protest against Poland’s policies against Russia and Belarus, with his country pushing for a war with them under American and British influence.

At the time, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Minister for Foreign Affairs Radosław Sikorski called Szmydt a traitor, questioning as to when such “collaboration” with Russians started.

In 2019 Szmydt was involved in a WhatsApp group scandal which included the Deputy Minister of Justice, where ways of discrediting judges opposing judicial reforms by the Law and Justice Party (PiS) were discussed. At the time, the EU Court of Justice ruled that such reforms threatened to undermine the independence of judiciary.