«A parody of justice». Foreign human rights defenders commented on the harsh sentence of the Belarusian journalist

“The sen­tenc­ing of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ist Pavel Pad­abed to four years’ impris­on­ment after a hasty two-day tri­al is a trav­es­ty of jus­tice,” said Gul­noza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Cen­tral Asia pro­gram coor­di­na­tor, in Ams­ter­dam. “Author­i­ties should drop all charges against Pad­abed, release him imme­di­ate­ly along­side all oth­er impris­oned jour­nal­ists, and stop retal­i­at­ing against mem­bers of the press for their report­ing.”

On Fri­day, a court in Min­sk, the cap­i­tal, con­vict­ed Pad­abed of par­tic­i­pat­ing in an extrem­ist for­ma­tion and sen­tenced him to four years at the request of state pros­e­cu­tors, accord­ing to reports by the banned human rights group Vias­na and the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, an advo­ca­cy and trade group oper­at­ing from exile. Padabed’s tri­al began Wednes­day.

Belarus was the world’s fifth worst jail­er of jour­nal­ists, with at least 26 jour­nal­ists behind bars on Decem­ber 1, 2022, when CPJ con­duct­ed its most recent prison cen­sus. In May, author­i­ties sim­i­lar­ly sen­tenced jour­nal­ist Yauhen Merkis to four years on extrem­ism charges.

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