MINSK (Reuters) – A Belarus court Thursday sentenced an opposition activist to four years in a top-security jail for taking part in mass unrest during a rally last December against the re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko.
Vasily Parfenkov, 27, was the first to be tried of about 30 people held after a police crackdown on a December 19 protest rally in Minsk and who include four opposition presidential candidates.
The prosecution had asked for a six-year sentence.
The police action triggered fresh Western sanctions against Lukashenko, who has ruled the ex-Soviet republic since 1994 and whose re-election was denounced as fraudulent by the opposition and international monitors.
Judge Olga Komar, handing down sentence after a speedy one-day trial, said Parfenkov, campaign manager to one of the main opposition presidential candidates, had been part of "lawless crowd" which had tried to break into an official government building.
Parfenkov earlier had acknowledged taking part in the December 19, but denied breaking the glass windows of an official building that some people in the crowd had attacked on the night.
Authorities have since used television footage of the incident to substantiate claims of a Western-inspired coup attempt against Lukashenko.
Ales Belyatski, a prominent human rights campaigner, said the outcome was a "bad signal" for the four presidential candidates who are among those awaiting trial.
"If they are going to deal as harshly as this with a simple activist (like Parfenkov) then it has to be assumed that the next sentences of those who are accused of organizing unrest will be even harsher. It is a bad signal above all for the former presidential candidates," said Belyatski, head of the human rights Vesna (Spring) 96 website.
Three presidential candidates are still being held and include Andrei Sannikov of the "For a European Belarus" movement.
Vladimir Neklyayev, a 64-year-old poet and head of the "Tell the Truth" movement and for whom Parfenkov worked, is under house arrest, but may go on trial.
(Reporting by Andrei Makhovsky; Writing by Richard Balmforth)
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