A prominent human rights activist in Belarus was jailed for tax evasion Thursday, after a trial that was seen as a sham by international observers.
Ales Belyatsky was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for tax evasion and he will appeal the verdict, according to Amnesty International.
An observer with Human Rights Watch said the trial was not legitimate under Belarusian law with uncertified documents used as evidence, as well as evidence obtained without the authority to do so. Two witnesses also gave suspiciously identical testimony even making the same grammatical mistake.
Belyatsky is in charge of the Vesna Human Rights Center and had been detained by Belarusian authorities since August. Officials said that he used bank accounts in Poland and Lithuania.
Vesna has been a vocal opponent of longtime President Alexander Lukashenko’s crackdown on dissent.
Amnesty and the European Union called on Belarus to drop the charges against Belyatsky.
Belyatsky’s arrest and sentencing is “a politically motivated pretext to target his important work to the benefit of victims of repression,” the EU Foreign Affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Commissioner Stefan Ful said in a joint statement.
The EU and the United States have both imposed sanctions on Lukashenko’s regime for his crackdown on dissent, notably after he took action against hundreds of activists who criticized the 2010 elections in which he was re-elected.
