MINSK. March 3 (Interfax) - A court in Minsk sentenced Nobel Prize winner, human rights activist Ales Bialiatski to ten years of imprisonment on Friday, the Belarusian Supreme Court's press service said.
"The court has sentenced Alexander Belyatsky [Ales Bialiatski] to ten years of imprisonment and has handed down a sentence of nine years on Valentin Stefanovich, seven years on Vladimir Labkovich, and eight years on Dmitry Solovyov, who was not present in the courtroom," the press service said.
The trial of Bialiatski, the head of the Viasna unregistered human rights center, and his colleagues Stefanovich, Labkovich and Solovyov (who has left Belarus) began in early January.
The human rights activists were charged with tax evasion. According to the investigators, acting together with "other unidentified persons" they performed work in 2013-2020 and received at least 879,887 Belarusian rubles (about $350,000 by the current exchange rate) as remuneration.
The prosecution said that Bialiatski and his colleagues continued to manage Viasna after it was abolished by the Belarusian Supreme Court in 2003 but did not register the center as a taxpayer and did not submit their tax declarations. The human rights activists are charged with tax evasion totaling over 113,000 Belarusian rubles (about $45,000) in 2013-2020.
Bialiatski is the founder of Viasna, which was abolished by a ruling of the Belarusian Supreme Court in 2003. Together with Stefanovich and Labkovich, he was arrested after searches at Belarusian human rights and non-governmental organizations on July 14, 2021.
In 2022, Bialiatski was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, together with the Memorial Human Rights Center (designated as a foreign agent in Russia) and Ukraine's Center for Civil Liberties.