Belarus sentences exiled opposition leader to 15 years in prison

A Belarusian court has sentenced the country's exiled main opposition leader in absentia to 15 years in prison, state news agency Belta reported on Monday, as the government continues to suppress dissent following a 2020 election whose results were widely derided as fraudulent.

Opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has fled the country after running for president in 2020 against authoritarian Belarusian leader Alexander G. Lukashenko. She was based in neighboring Lithuania and continues to coordinate opposition to the Belarusian government from abroad.

The court in Minsk handed down the sentence for crimes, including included a plot to seize state power as well as creating and leading an extremist group, Belta reported. He said the court also sentenced another exiled opposition leader, Pavel P. Latushko, to 18 years in prison.

In a post on Twitter , Ms Tsikhanouskaya - who previously described the charges against her as a "farce" - played down the sentence and drew attention to opposition activists who have been jailed by authorities in Belarus.

"15 years in prison. This is how the regime 'rewarded' my work for democratic changes in Belarus," she wrote. to my own pain. I am thinking of thousands of innocent people, detained and sentenced to real prison terms."

Mrs. Tsikhanouskaya ran for president in place of her husband, Sergei Tsikhanousky, a popular blogger who was arrested in 2020 after declaring his own presidential candidacy. He remains in prison in Belarus.

Mr. Lukashenko has ruled Belarus since 1994. When he was declared the winner of the 2020 election, months of mass protests followed. Human Rights Watch has since documented hundreds of cases in which protesters have been detained and tortured.

The authoritarian leader is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, and M. A year ago, Lukashenko's government allowed Belarus to be a staging base for Russian troops when they launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Ms Tsikhanouskaya's sentencing comes a week after Belarus sentenced Ales Bialiatski, a veteran human rights activist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October, to 10 years jail time, according to Viasna, the group he helped found.