World News | Belarus awards top Polish newspaper reporter 8-year term

TALINN, Feb. 8 (AP) — A Belarusian court sentenced a journalist and a prominent member of the country’s sizable Polish minority to eight years in prison Wednesday, while continuing a crackdown on critics of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko’s regime.

Andrzej Poczobut, 49, was found guilty of endangering Belarusian state security and “inciting discord” in a closed trial in the western city of Grodno.

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Poczobut, a journalist for the influential Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza and a top figure in the Belarusian Union of Poles, has been in prison since his detention in March 2021.

He has reported extensively on Belarus’s massive protests that have lasted weeks after presidential elections in 2020 that saw Lukashenko, in power since 1994, get a new term but were widely dismissed by the opposition and the West as fraudulent. .

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The indictment against Poczobut cites his coverage of the protests, his defense of Poles in Belarus, and his 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland as an act of “aggression” as evidence against his charges.

While independent journalists or Western diplomats were not allowed into the courtroom on Wednesday, official courtroom photos showed Poczobut with dark circles under his eyes and indicated he had lost significant weight while in custody.

The journalist remained in Belarus during the authorities’ massive crackdown on protests, when more than 35,000 people were arrested, thousands were beaten by police and tens of thousands fled abroad.

According to Viasna, a prominent Belarusian human rights organization, Pozobut refused to sign a petition for Lukashenko’s pardon after his arrest. During his detention, Poczobut was denied family visits and has been unable to hear from his 12-year-old son, relatives said.

Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tikhanuskaya tweeted on Wednesday that Pozobut’s sentencing was Lukashenko’s “personal revenge”.

“Andrzej refuses to make any deals with the illegitimate regime. Now we must do everything possible to free him and all other political hostages,” she wrote.

Human rights group Viasna has included Poczobut on a list of 1,449 political prisoners held in Minsk.

The Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) issued a statement on Wednesday calling for Poczobut’s immediate release.

BAJ leader Andrei Bastunets said: “Belarus has cracked down on any dissent, and the sentence against Poczobut confirms that the authorities have no intention of stopping the (cycle) of repression.”

In a Twitter post, a spokesman for Poland’s foreign ministry condemned the sentence as “unjust” and described Poczobut as a “patriot of Poland and Belarus”. (Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)