Activist Ales Bialiatski was fined $65,000 and tried for smuggling and financing protests
The Leninsky District court in Minsk (Belarus) sentenced Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski to 10 years in prison. He was accused of smuggling and financing protests. Bialiatski was also fined around US$65,000 (R$338,000 at current prices). The activist’s defense has a period of 10 days to appeal. The information is from the newspaper-digital axles and news agency Tass.
Bialiatski is a human rights activist in Belarus and was awarded in October 2022 for his work in Vesna Human Rights Center. He was arrested during demonstrations against the 2020 elections in Belarus that kept President Aleksandr Lukashenko in power.
Representatives of the Vesna organization, Valentin Stefanovich and Vladimir Labkovich, were also sentenced to 9 and 7 years in prison, respectively. They will be held in a maximum security prison. The defendants were fined approximately US$40,000 each (R$208,000 at current prices).
Stefanovich and Labkovich were arrested in July 2021 and were tried on January 5, 2023. The 2 pleaded not guilty.
In January 2022, a court in Gomel deemed all content produced by the Vesna Center to be extremist.
Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said in her profile on twitter that the judgment against Bialiatski and the other defendants was “simply terrible”.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said that “Attempts to silence them [ativistas] will fail”.
Bialatsky was arrested in August 2011 and sentenced in November to 4½ years in a maximum security prison for tax evasion. He did not admit his guilt. In June 2014, he was released before the end of his sentence.
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