Belarus’s opposition leader Sergei Tikhanovsky has been sentenced to 18 years in prison on Tuesday for plotting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad and inciting social unrest.
“Tichanowski was sentenced to 18 years in prison, which he will serve in a colony of high-security detainees,” Gomelsk city court spokeswoman Alina Suleiko told TASS in Minsk.
Five of Tikhanovsky’s supporters, who were tried with him, were sentenced to 14 to 16 years in prison.
They are Artyom Sakov and Dmitry Popov, who were sentenced to 16 years in prison, activist Nikolai Statkevich, who was sentenced to 14 years in prison, and Igor Lodik and Vladimir Tsiganovic, who were sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Tikhanovsky, a blogger, was jailed in May 2020 as he prepared to run against Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko in the August presidential election. Tichanovsky himself has denied the allegations.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya’s wife took his place in the election, in which Lukashenko claimed a sweeping victory. The protests were followed by a wave of mass demonstrations that lasted for months, with the opposition accusing Lukashenko of using fraud during the vote.
Hours before the court ruling was announced today, Tikhanovskaya called it “illegal”, saying it was “something that should not be tolerated”.
“Commenting on the so-called ‘verdict’, I will ask myself only one question: what will I do with this news? “I will continue to defend the man I love, who has become a leader for millions of Belarusians,” she said in a video message.
“I will try to do something very difficult, perhaps impossible, in order to bring it closer when we see him in the new Belarus.”
After the elections, Tichanovskaya fled to neighboring Lithuania to escape the sweeping crackdown on the opposition. He has since gained prominence, meeting a number of Western leaders.
Tichanovsky’s trial was closed to the public and lawyers were barred from disclosing details of the case.
In July, a Belarusian court sentenced former presidential candidate Viktor Babariko to 14 years in prison after he was convicted of corruption, which he denied.
In September, Maria Kolesnikova, one of the leaders of the mass protests against Lukashenko last year, was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
UN Special Rapporteur Anais Marin said more than 35,000 people had been arbitrarily arrested over the past year and that fears of repression had led to the flight of tens of thousands of Belarusians seeking refuge abroad.
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