This may have been a factor in Judge Cooper's decision (see previous post)

An American who faces criminal charges for participating in the January 6 riot at the United States Capitol is seeking asylum in Belarus, the nation’s state TV reported on Monday – a sign of heightening tensions between the turbulent former Soviet state and the US.

Evan Neumann, 48, of California, taunted and screamed profanities at US Capitol police on January 6 before putting a gas mask over his face and threatening one officer, saying police would be “overrun” by the crowd, according to US prosecutors.

[...]

“I don’t think I have committed some kind of a crime,” Neumann said, according to a Belarus 1 voiceover of his interview remarks. “One of the charges was very offensive; it alleges that I hit a police officer. It doesn’t have any grounds to it.”

[...]

The FBI alleges that Neumann stood at the front of a police barricade wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat as a mob of pro-Trump rioters tried to force past officers, according to court papers reviewed by Al Jazeera.

“I’m willing to die, are you?” prosecutors quoted Neumann saying to police.

  alJazeera

Willing to die, but not willing to serve any time in jail.

Neumann told Belarus 1 that his photo had been added to the FBI’s most-wanted list, after which he left the country under the pretence of a business trip. Neuman, who owns a handbag manufacturing business, travelled to Italy in March, and then through Switzerland, Germany and Poland. When he got to Ukraine he spent several months there.

He said he decided to illegally cross into neighbouring Belarus after he noticed surveillance by Ukraine’s security forces. “It is awful. It is political persecution,” Neumann told the TV channel.

Belarusian border guards detained the American when he tried to cross into Belarus and requested asylum in mid-August. Belarus does not have an extradition treaty with the US.

[...]

Belarus 1 television anchors described Neumann as a “simple American, whose stores were burned down by members of the Black Lives Matter movement, who was seeking justice, asking inconvenient questions, but lost almost everything and is being persecuted by the US government”.

In a short preface to the interview, the Belarus 1 reporter also said that “something” made Neumann “flee from the country of fairy-tale freedoms and opportunities” – an apparent snub towards the US, which has levied multiple sanctions against Belarus over human rights abuses and violent crackdowns on dissent.

The FBI said in court documents filed in July that Neumann spent four hours at the riot, punched police officers and used a metal barricade as a "battering ram" against cops who were trying to hold off the mob.

An anonymous family friend identified Neumann to the FBI and agents questioned him at the San Francisco airport in February.

[...]

Neumann, who was then added to the FBI's Most Wanted list, sold his [two-bedroom home in Mill Valley, a bedroom community for the city of San Francisco] in April for $1.3 million.

[...]

Neumann claimed in an interview with the outlet that he has many friends in the U.S. government who tipped him off after the FBI published his photo and asked the public to help identify him.

[...]

"I hired a lawyer. And the lawyer said that I could go to Europe on a business trip. … The lawyer said it was good because it would buy time."

[...]

Neumann said he traveled through multiple countries in March before reaching Ukraine, where he rented an apartment. Neumann claimed that after four months there, he came under scrutiny by Ukrainian authorities. He said he hiked through the Ukrainian wilderness, encountering swamps, wild boars and aggressive snakes, to the Belarus border, where he was detained by authorities on Aug. 15.

  Salon

Oh, yes, a hero's journey. A real man's man.

He said he was hurt by the allegation that he hit a police officer, claiming it was a baseless charge. In fact, he disputed that any of the Jan. 6 protesters were responsible for breaking into the Capitol, suggesting that it might have been a government setup.

[...]

The state TV outlet claimed that at least three U.S. citizens have applied for asylum in Belarus this year. Lukashenko, who has been labeled "Europe's last dictator," was accused of stealing an election last year before staged a wide crackdown on opposition protests and journalists, even faking a terrorist threat to ground a Ryanair flight carrying a blogger who was then detained for "inciting unrest."

Live coverage and police body cams notwithstanding.

I can't find anything to corroborate that BLM members burned Neumann's store(s).

According to the DOJ complaint, citing Neumann’s own Linkedin page, he took part in the Ukrainian Orange Revolution in 2004, which overturned the rigged presidential election of Viktor Yanukovych.

  Vice

So, he has prior experience. Too bad he won't be here for the next, more successful, coup attempt. But it makes me wonder if Belarus will be willing to give him asylum, since he participated in the Orange Revolution. They might consider him a risk to their despotic government.  They might think he's a plant.

How many MAGAheads condemning Edward Snowden (who, by the way, did not choose Russia as his place of refuge, but was stranded there) are cheering Neumann? 

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.