TALLINN, Estonia — Belarus‘ Supreme Court on Friday upheld an eight-year prison sentence handed to a prominent member of the country’s sizable Polish minority and a correspondent for a prime newspaper in Poland.
The resolution is seen a part of the federal government’s sweeping, yr’s lengthy crackdown on opposition figures, human rights activists and impartial reporters.
The Court rejected the enchantment of Andrzej Poczobut, a 50-year-old reporter with Poland‘s influential Gazeta Wyborcza, dismissing all protection arguments.
In February, Poczobut was discovered responsible of inflicting hurt on Belarus‘ nationwide safety and “sowing discord.” The trial occurred behind closed doorways within the Belarusian metropolis of Grodno. He has remained behind bars ever since his arrest in March 2021.
Poczobut had extensively coated mass protests that engulfed Belarus in 2020 within the wake of the disputed presidential election that handed authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko his sixth time period in workplace. Both the Belarusian opposition and the West have denounced the vote as rigged.
Poczobut‘s indictment pointed to his protection of the protests, his statements in assist of ethnic Poles in Belarus and a reference to the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland as an act of “aggression” as proof of his guilt.
The Belarusian Association of Journalists stated that Poczobut’s enchantment was thought-about behind closed doorways with out rationalization. The journalist is at present within the Grodno jail no. 1 and can now be transferred to a penal colony.
Poland‘s Foreign Ministry on Friday vowed to proceed calling for the discharge of all political prisoners in Belarus. “Upholding the sentence of 8 years in prison for Andrzej Poczobut clearly shows the ill-will of the Belarusian authorities regarding representatives of the national minority in Belarus,” the ministry tweeted.
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