- Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, who is serving a 10-year prison sentence in Belarus, was detained and tried illegally and should be released immediately, a group of experts mandated by the United Nations says.

Bialiatski founded the rights group Viasna and is now one of about 1,400 political prisoners who the organisation says are being held by the administration of President Alexander Lukashenko. Lukashenko, in power since 1994, launched a crackdown against demonstrators who staged unprecedented mass protests against his re-election in 2020 in a vote that was denounced in the West as rigged. The statement from the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention follows an open letter signed by 63 Nobel prize winners urging Lukashenko to free more political prisoners, after Viasna said 18 were released at the start of this month. The U.N. group said Bialiatski's detention was "arbitrary" as he had been exercising his right to freedom of expression and assembly and been "deprived of effective legal representation". The tribunal considering his case, it said, was headed by a judge previously sanctioned by the European Union for issuing politically motivated rulings against peaceful protesters. The working group said it was necessary "to release Mr. Bialiatski immediately and accord him an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations, in accordance with international law". Bialiatski, now 61, was awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Russian rights group Memorial and the Centre for Civil Liberties in Ukraine. He was already in detention at the time, having been arrested in July 2021.

Last year he was jailed for 10 years on charges of smuggling and "financing group actions that grossly violate public order", after a trial that the United States and European Union condemned as a "sham". Amnesty International last week called for his release on grounds of deteriorating health.

Lukashenko survived the mass 2020 protests with the help of reassurances of support from Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2022, the Belarusian leader allowed the Kremlin to use his country's territory to help launch the invasion of Ukraine.

  - Reuters