Key Points
- Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski has been sentenced to 10 years in jail.
- The 60-year-old was a co-recipient of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.
- The UN and Nobel committee were among those to strongly condemn his sentence.
Belarus on Friday handed a 10-year jail term to Nobel Prize winning activist Ales Bialiatski, drawing strong international condemnation.
, who founded the authoritarian nation's most prominent rights group, has repeatedly run into trouble with security forces in Belarus, which is often described as "Europe's last dictatorship".
He was in the dock with two allies after they were jailed in the aftermath of historic demonstrations against the disputed re-election of the country's strongman President Alexander Lukashenko in 2020.
The 60-year-old and his associates had been convicted of smuggling and financing "activities that grossly violate public order", said the Viasna (Spring) rights group founded by Mr Bialiatski.
He was on Friday handed a 10-year sentence, while co-defendants Valentin Stefanovich and Vladimir Labkovich were given nine and seven years in prison, respectively.
"These are very cruel sentences, for all of them," Mr Bialiatski's wife Natalya Pinchuk said in comments released by Viasna. "The terms are horrific."
The defendants have said they were innocent of the charges.
A fourth defendant, Dmitry Solovyov, who was tried in absentia, was sentenced to eight years.
The terms drew immediate condemnation, with the UN saying "the arbitrary arrest and detention of Belarusian human rights defenders on politically motivated charges are alarming."
The Nobel committee described the case as "politically motivated" and said "the verdict shows that the current regime uses all means to suppress its critics."
German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock slammed the charges and proceedings as a "farce". The French foreign ministry criticised Minsk's "unprecedented policy of repression".
Mr Bialiatski was among the three co-recipients of last year's Nobel Peace Prize, alongside Russian and Ukrainian human rights groups.
Mr Bialiatski's organisation — founded in 1996 — is Belarus's most prominent rights group and has charted the increasingly authoritarian tendencies of Mr Lukashenko and his security forces.
Mr Lukashenko has ruled the country with an iron first for nearly three decades.
and allowed Moscow to deploy troops to Ukraine from Belarus last February.
Belarus witnessed a historic protest movement denouncing the controversial re-election of Mr Lukashenko in 2020.
With the help of Mr Putin, Mr Lukashenko has cracked down hard on the opposition movement, jailing his critics or pushing them into exile.
Mr Solovyov, who fled to Poland and was sentenced in absentia, called the trial "a propaganda spectacle" and "a massacre of human rights defenders."
"The fact that human rights defenders were in a cage and handcuffs during the trial shows the degree of cruelty with which the regime deals with opponents," he told AFP.
