A Belarusian court sentenced the Russian companion of a local opponent to six years in prison on Friday, May 6, a year after their incredible arrest on board a plane which had been intercepted and forced to land in Minsk by a fighter.
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Following a trial held behind closed doors in Grodno (western Belarus), Sofia Sapega, partner of Belarusian opponent Roman Protassevich, was “
imprisoned for six years in a colony correctional system under the general regime
, ”said the Supreme Court of Belarus in a press release.
She was found guilty in particular of incitement to social hatred and illegal collection of personal data, according to the same source.
Sofia Sapega, 24, and Roman Protassevich, 27, were arrested in May 2021 in Minsk after their Ryanair plane from Athens to Vilnius was forced to reroute by an army MiG-29 fighter jet Belarusian.
This interception had caused an outcry.
Belarus claimed it intercepted the plane after receiving a '
bomb threat
', but an investigation by a UN agency concluded that it was '
deliberately false
'.
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After their arrest, Roman Protassevitch, who had resided in Europe since 2019, and Sofia Sapega both appeared in videos where they said they had "
confessed
", their supporters however claiming that these were confessions obtained under the constraint.
Roman Protassevich is a former editor-in-chief of Nexta, a media outlet that played a leading role in the great wave of protest against the re-election in 2020 of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled his country with an iron fist since 1994. The opponent is currently under house arrest in Belarus pending trial.
