Belarus jails Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski for 10 years

A court in Belarus on Friday sentenced the Nobel Peace Prize winning civil rights activist Ales Bialiatski to 10 years in prison.

Bialiatski, 60, was found guilty of organized smuggling and financing public unrest, the state news agency Belta said. The prosecution had demanded 12 years. Three other Belarusian civil rights activists were also sentenced to long prison terms, one in absentia.

The UN Human Rights Office in Geneva criticized the convictions, saying the trials were unfair and Belarus does not have an independent judiciary.

"The arbitrary arrest and detention of the Belarusian human rights defenders on politically motivated charges are alarming," spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said.

EU top diplomat Josep Borrell said Bialiatski and the others were sentenced to time in prison "on fake and politically motivated charges."

The EU is calling for the release of more than 1,450 political prisoners and "stands ready to react to repression and human rights abuses," he said.

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said she was "appalled by the sentencing" of Bialiatski, who is also a laureate of the parliament's human rights award, the Sakharov Prize.

In the presidential elections of 2020, Alexander Lukashenko, the long-time ruler, was declared the winner, but the vote was not recognized internationally and mass protests broke out across the country, which the authorities put down with violence.

The Viasna Human Rights Centre, which was founded by Bialiatski in 1996, registered numerous cases of torture and other human rights violations by the police. It helped demonstrators find and pay for legal representation.

That led to Viasna also being targeted by the authorities. After house searches, Bialiatski and other employees of the human rights centre were arrested in July 2021.

Bialiatski was unable to accept the Nobel Prize awarded to him in 2022 because he was being held in detention. Initially, the doctor of literature was arrested for alleged tax evasion. Only later were the charges changed. The international community considers Bialiatski to be a political prisoner.