On Friday, a Belarusian court sentenced Ales Bialiatski, the activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 and has been in prison in Belarus since 2021, to 10 years in prison. This was announced by Viasna, the human rights NGO which Bialiatski was founded in 1996 to give financial and legal assistance to political prisoners in Belarus and their families.
The trial against Bialiatski had begun earlier this year: he was convicted on charges of illicit financing of activities in opposition to the regime of Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian president who has ruled the country authoritarianly since 1994: Bialiatski’s supporters have always defined the accusations against him as a strategy of the regime to silence him. The crime he was charged with included between 7 and 12 years in prison.
