This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
The son of jailed Belarusian presidential hopeful Viktar Babaryka has been convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison on charges that he and other activists rejected as trumped up.
The Minsk District Court on July 5 sentenced Eduard Babaryka, 34, for “organizing mass riots” and “inciting hatred.”
Eduard Babaryka was a member of his father’s election campaign staff when the two were arrested two months before the August 2020 presidential vote and Viktar Babaryka was unable to officially get registered as a presidential candidate.
“I have not committed a single crime I am accused of,” said Eduard Babaryka, who has been in custody since his arrest and was kept in handcuffs during the trial. “The investigation did not find a single piece of evidence of my guilt.”
Opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, wife of Syarhey Tsikhanouski, who supporters say was the actual winner of the August 2020 election, strongly condemned Eduard Babaryka’s sentencing as a “vile act of revenge” for supporting his father.
“This injustice can’t be allowed to stand,” Tsikhanouskaya said on Twitter.
The Vyasna (Spring) human rights group said that the time Eduard Babaryka spent in pretrial detention through December 14, 2021, on charges of evasion of taxes and fees will not count toward the eight-year sentence.
Prosecutors brought new criminal charges against him after the initial 18 months of pretrial detention on the tax evasion charges.
According to the indictment, Eduard Babaryka allegedly helped Syarhey Tsikhanouski organize mass riots and incite enmity, state news agency BelTA reported.
Prosecutor Aleksandar Karol on June 28 asked the Minsk regional court to find Eduard Babaryka guilty of all charges, including tax evasion, money laundering, assisting in the organizing of mass disorder, and inciting hatred, and sentence him to 10 years, Vyasna reported.
Viktar Babaryka, the former head of the Russian-owned Belgazprombank, was sentenced in July 2021 to 14 years in prison on charges of bribe-taking and money laundering that he and his supporters have called political retribution for challenging authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka.
Telegram channel Rabochy Rukh (Labor Movement) last month cited sources as saying that the elder Babaryka was rushed from a penal colony to a hospital in the northern city of Navapolatsk with a collapsed lung and signs of multiple beatings. His exact whereabouts have not been known since late April.
Lukashenka was declared the victor of the August 2020 election, triggering protests by tens of thousands of Belarusians who say the balloting was rigged. The demonstrations lasted for months as Belarusians demanded Lukashenka, in power since 1994, step down and hold fresh elections.
The August 2020 vote was rejected as fraudulent by the opposition and the West, and the country at Lukashenka’s direction began to crack down on demonstrators, arresting thousands and pushing most leading opposition figures out of the country.
Several protesters have been killed in the violence and rights organizations say there is credible evidence of torture being used against some of those detained.
Lukashenka denies voter fraud and has refused to negotiate with the opposition led by Tsikhanouskaya.
The European Union, United States, Canada, and other countries have refused to recognize Lukashenka, 68, as the legitimate leader of Belarus and have slapped him and senior Belarusian officials with sanctions in response to the “falsification” of the vote and the postelection crackdown.
