Co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Ales Beliatski, a veteran human rights defender in Belarus, faces up to 12 years in prison in a cash “smuggling” case, his NGO Viasna announced on Monday.
Ales Beliatski, already imprisoned since July 2021 in Belarus, appears in this case along with two other detained collaborators and a third exiled abroad, according to Viasna.
“They face between 7 and 12 years in prison,” he said in a statement.
Ales Beliatski and his collaborators are accused of having passed through the Belarusian border “a large amount of cash in an organized group” and of having “financed collective actions that seriously undermine public order”. According to Viasna, a trial date has not yet been set.
President Lukashenko highlighted
This case is widely perceived as revenge for Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, in power since 1994, a Moscow ally who has muzzled any form of criticism, especially since a large post-election protest movement in the summer of 2020.
Ales Beliatski won the Nobel Peace Prize this year thanks to his fight for human rights, together with the Russian Memorial Center and the NGO Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties. Belarus had denounced this price as a “politicized decision”.
Founded in 1996 during the mass pro-democracy protests in Belarus, Viasna began its work providing aid to incarcerated people and their families.
His work was later extended to the defense of human rights in general, in a country where abuses in this area are widespread.
Source: BFM TV
