Nobel Prize winner Ales Bialiatski is seen within the defendants’ cage within the courtroom in the beginning of the listening to in Minsk on Jan. 5, 2023

Vitaly Pivovarchik/BELTA/AFP through Getty Pictures

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Vitaly Pivovarchik/BELTA/AFP through Getty Pictures

Nobel Prize winner Ales Bialiatski is seen within the defendants’ cage within the courtroom in the beginning of the listening to in Minsk on Jan. 5, 2023

Vitaly Pivovarchik/BELTA/AFP through Getty Pictures

MOSCOW — A courtroom in Belarus has sentenced final 12 months’s Nobel Peace Prize co-recipient Ales Bialiatski to 10 years in jail for allegedly making an attempt to overthrow the federal government.

The founding father of the human rights group Viasna, Ales Bialiatski was amongst 1000’s of Belarusians who have been detained amid a brutal crackdown on protests towards the continued rule of strongman Alexander Lukashenko following disputed nationwide elections in 2020.

Three years later, a Minsk courtroom discovered Bialiatski responsible of smuggling cash from overseas to finance the anti-government demonstrations.

Two different colleagues from Viasna — Valiantsin Stefanovich and Uladzimir Labkovich — have been additionally sentenced to 9 and 7 years, respectively, on the identical costs.

Based on Viasna, the boys sat handcuffed with their arms behind their backs in a cage because the decide learn out the ruling.

All three denied the fees towards them.

The case was broadly seen as political retribution for Viasna’s push for democratic reforms in Belarus — a trigger for which Bialiatski shared final 12 months’s Nobel Peace Prize with the Russian rights group Memorial and Ukraine’s Middle for Civil Liberties.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who many Belarusians consider bested Lukashenko within the presidential elections that triggered the 2020 protests, denounced the ruling as payback from a vengeful dictator.

“The shameful sentence towards Ales, Valiantsin & Uladzimir is the regime’s revenge for his or her steadfastness,” wrote Tsikhanouskaya in a submit to Twitter.

“Revenge for solidarity. Revenge for serving to others. Ten years for a Nobel Prize laureate exhibits clearly what Lukashenka’s regime is.”

We can’t cease preventing for our heroes,” she added.