Belarusian athlete Krystsina Tsimanouskaya has been granted a visa to travel to Warsaw.
The Olympic sprinter plans to seek asylum in Poland, an activist group said, after she alleged her team’s officials tried to force her to fly home, where she feared she wouldn’t be safe from an autocratic government that recently was accused of diverting a plane in order to arrest a dissident journalist.
She received a humanitarian visa from the Polish embassy in Tokyo, according to a Polish foreign ministry official.
The current stand-off apparently began after Tsimanouskaya criticised how officials were managing her team, claiming she was entered for the 4×400 relay despite never having raced in the event.
