Belarusian journalist from hijacked Ryanair flight sentenced to 8 years in prison in sham trial
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The prosecutor's office had requested 10 years in a maximum-security prison.
Two other defendants in the case – Nexta founder Stepan Putilo and former channel editor Yan Rudyk – were sentenced in absentia to 20 and 19 years in prison, respectively.
The Lukashenko regime-controlled investigation stated that since 2020, the defendants had “conspired to seize state power in Belarus by unconstitutional means," and had published "information materials with destructive goals" on the Nexta and Belarus Golovnogo Mozga Telegram channels.
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The court believes that the defendants called on "protest-minded citizens to commit acts of terrorism."
Protasevich is the only defendant in the case who has been detained and is being tried in person.
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Protasevich and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, were taken off a Ryanair plane en route from Greece to Lithuania in May 2021 after the aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing in Minsk due to the actions of a Belarusian military aircraft.
Western countries view this emergency landing as a hijacking orchestrated by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko strictly to detain a member of the opposition.
Read also: Belarusian ‘rail partisan’ sentenced to 13 years in prison
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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
