Belarus seeks to jail Nobel Peace Prize winner for 12 years

By YURAS KARMANAU
Associated Press

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Belarusian authorities have equested a lengthy prison sentence for jailed human rights activist Ales Bialiatski. He was one of the winners of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize. The prosecutor has asked a court in Minsk to hand Bialiatski a 12-year prison sentence for financing anti-government protests. The Nobeal Peace Prize laureate stood trial along with three of his colleagues from the Viasna human rights center that he had founded. The rights advocates were arrested after the months-long mass protests in Belarus that followed the 2020 presidential election that handed authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko his sixth term in office. The vote was denounced by the opposition and the West as rigged.