One of President Alexander Lukashenko's main political opponents went on trial in Belarus on Wednesday on a charge linked to demonstrations last December against the hardline leader's re-election.
Andrei Sannikov, a former deputy foreign minister and co-founder of the Charter 97 rights group, faces up to 15 years jail if he is convicted of organising mass disturbances.
Sannikov, 57, was one of seven presidential candidates who were arrested on Dec. 19 during a mass rally in the capital Minsk against Lukashenko’s re-election that day for a fourth term in power.
Several of those have been released, pending trial, but Sannikov and two other presidential contenders have been held in prison since their arrest.
Earlier on Wednesday, a close aide of Sannikov was jailed for two years for organising actions which "violated public order", the human rights group Vesna 96 said. Dmitry Bondarenko, who helped organise Sannikov’s election campaign, was also arrested at the December rally.
The police crackdown on the Minsk demonstration, in which hundreds of opposition activists and dissidents were rounded up, was condemned by rights groups and Western governments.
The political opposition said the re-election of Lukashenko, in power in the ex-Soviet republic since 1994, was fraudulent and Western monitors described it as "flawed".
The United States and the European Union have since blacklisted Lukashenko because of the crackdown, imposing sanctions including a travel ban on him and 150 of his closest associates in power.
Sannikov heard the charge read against him on Wednesday as he sat in a metal cage in the courtroom with four police officers. The Charter 97 leader is the most senior of anti-Lukashenko activists to go on trial on charges arising from the rally. Seven other activists, tried previously, were given jail sentences from two to four years.
