Belarusian Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski sentenced to ten years in prison

MADRID, 3 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Leninski Court, in Minsk, has sentenced this Friday the Belarusian Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski to ten years in prison for smuggling and belonging to an organized group in the framework of a case related to the NGO Viasna.

Along with him, three other activists have been sentenced; his deputy, Valiantsin Stefanovich, the coordinator of the campaign for "free elections", Vladimir Labkovich, and Dimitri Soloviov, according to information from the BelTA news agency.

The Prosecutor's Office had requested twelve years in prison for Bialiatski, who had been in prison since July 2021, who was also accused of financing anti-government protests and evading taxes.

For his part, Stefanovich has been sentenced to nine years in prison, Soloviov, who has been tried 'in absentia', has been sentenced to eight years in prison and Labkovich to seven. According to prosecutors, between 2013 and 2020 all of them "together with other people who have not been identified" formed a network that allowed them to obtain more than 800,000 Belarusian rubles (about 350,000 euros) of profit.

Investigators have indicated that Bialiatski and his colleagues did not register the organization with the Treasury and did not present the relevant documents to the authorities. Thus, they were accused of evading about 113,000 Belarusian rubles (about 43,000 euros). However, all of them have pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Bialiatski won the Nobel Prize in 2022 together with the Russian Memorial organization and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties and became the fourth person to be recognized with the award while incarcerated. The Government of Belarus criticized the Nobel Prize the same day and assured that recognitions like this make Alfred Nobel "turn in his grave."