A court in Belarus sentenced the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Byaljacki (60) to 10 years in prison, the Russian state news agency TASS reported.
Bjaljacki, a pro-democracy activist, said he was persecuted for political reasons.
Bjaljacki is a prominent Belarusian human rights activist.
He is the founder of the human rights center Vyasna (Spring), which was created in 1996 in response to the brutally suppressed street protests against the regime of Alexander Lukashenko.
He was first arrested in 2011 and spent three years in prison on tax evasion charges he denied.
He was detained again in 2020 after mass protests over what the Belarusian opposition and independent observers say were rigged elections in Belarus that kept Lukashenko in power.
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