Former editor-in-chief of Nexta, Roman Protasevich, has been pardoned, the official Belarusian press reports
Roman Protasevich, the Belarusian opposition blogger arrested in 2021 after the Ryanair flight he was on was forced to land in Minsk, was pardoned on Monday, the official BelTA news agency reported, according to Reuters, cited by Agerpres.
"I have just signed the relevant documents saying that I have been pardoned. It is, of course, good news," Protasevich told the press, according to BelTA.
He was sentenced in early May to eight years in prison for criminal offences such as inciting terrorism, organising mass riots and defaming Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko.
Protasevich worked as a journalist for the news website Nexta, which reported extensively on the mass protests against Lukashenko in 2020 after the presidential election that the opposition and Western governments said were rigged.
Following the crackdown around the election, leading opposition figures have either ended up in jail or fled into exile.
Nexta founder Stsiapan Putsila and former editor Yan Rudik were sentenced in absentia by the same court to 20 and 19 years in prison respectively. The Belarusian authorities last year declared Nexta a "terrorist organisation".
The Protasevich case began with a scandal after a Ryanair plane flying from Athens to Vilnius was forced to land in Minsk on 23 May 2021. Among its passengers were Roman Protasevich and his then girlfriend Sofia Sapega. Both were detained and shortly arrested. Since then, very little has been known about the lives of Protasevich and Sapega, both of whom were under the complete control of the security forces, reports the BBC.
The circumstances of Protasevich's arrest in May 2021 drew international condemnation and prompted the European Union to sanction Lukashenko.
Britain and the European Union have banned Belarusian planes from flying over their territory, and European companies' planes are circling Belarus.
After his arrest, Protasevich was shown on public television tearfully confessing his involvement in anti-government protests and a plot to overthrow Lukashenko.
The Belarusian opposition in exile said the confessions were false and obtained under duress.
