Moscow, Mar 6 (EFE).- Belarus on Monday sentenced exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in absentia to 15 years in prison for conspiracy to seize power in the eastern European nation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Four other exiled opposition leaders were sentenced in the same case, including former culture minister Pavel Latushko, who was handed a term of 18 years. The three others were given 12-year sentences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of those convicted in absentia Monday are in exile in either Lithuania or Poland, both of which border Belarus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Minsk court ruled that Tsikhanouskaya and the other accused had attempted to seize power in Belarus, created an extremist group and encouraged actions to damage national security. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tsikhanouskaya ran against hard-line president Alexander Lukashenko in the 2020 election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The country\u2019s electoral commission handed a landslide win to Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994. The results were widely rejected by the West, however, and Tsikhanouskaya claimed victory herself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mass protests erupted after the election, and were violently clamped down on by the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tsikhanouskaya, who ran in the election in place of her detained husband and opposition leader Sergei Tikhanovsky, now leads an opposition platform from exile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She remarked on Monday\u2019s ruling with a social media post. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c15 years of prison. This is how the regime \u2018rewarded\u2019 my work for democratic changes in Belarus. But today I don’t think about my own sentence. I think about thousands of innocents, detained and sentenced to real prison terms. I won’t stop until each of them is released,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are over 1,400 political prisoners in Belarus, according to the Viasna human rights group. EFE <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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