From Reuters:
“Belarusian blogger arrested on Ryanair flight pardoned -
state media”
(Opposition blogger and activist Roman Protasevich, who is
accused of participating in an unsanctioned protest at the Kuropaty preserve,
arrives for a court hearing in Minsk, Belarus April 10, 2017.)
Roman Protasevich, the Belarusian opposition blogger arrested
in 2021 after his Ryanair overflight was forced to land in Minsk, was pardoned
on Monday, the Belarusian state news agency BelTA reported. "I have
literally just signed all the relevant documents stating that I have been
pardoned," BelTA quoted Protasevich as telling reporters. "This is,
of course, great news." Protasevich had been sentenced to eight years in
prison this month for offences including inciting terrorism, organising mass
disturbances and slandering Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
He had worked as a journalist at the news outlet Nexta, which
reported extensively on mass protests against Lukashenko in 2020 following a
presidential election that the opposition and Western governments denounced as
rigged. A clampdown around the time of the election resulted in all significant
opposition figures being jailed or driven into exile. Nexta's founder Stsiapan
Putsila and former editor Yan Rudik were sentenced in absentia by the same
court to 20 and 19 years in jail respectively. Belarus declared Nexta a
"terrorist organisation" last year.
The circumstances of Protasevich's arrest in May 2021
prompted international outrage and triggered European Union sanctions against
Lukashenko. After his arrest, Protasevich was shown on state television
tearfully confessing to involvement in anti-government protests and plotting to
topple Lukashenko. The exiled Belarus opposition said the admissions were false
and had been coerced.
^ I’m glad he was Pardoned, but he should never have been
arrested in the first place (nor should the Belarussian Authorities called a
Fake Bomb Threat to force the plane to land in Belarus.) ^
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