Sofia Sapega, whose flight was once pressured to land in Belarus final 12 months, was once convicted for inciting social hatred.
A Belarusian court docket sentenced Sofia Sapega, the female friend of a dissident arrested after their business flight was once pressured to land in Belarus final 12 months, to 6 years in jail on Friday for inciting social hatred, in line with the Viasna Human Rights Middle.
The 24-year-old Russian citizen was once flying together with her boyfriend Roman Protasevich, a dissident blogger vital of Belarusian chief Alexander Lukashenko, on a Ryanair flight from Athens, Greece, to Vilnius, Lithuania, in Would possibly 2021 when it was once diverted to Minsk by means of Belarusian government.
Belarus mentioned on the time it had ordered the airplane to land after an nameless tip-off that there was once a bomb on board.
The bomb danger became out to be false, and Protasevich and Sapega had been straight away arrested.
The diversion of a business flight to arrest the pair caused global outrage and steered the Eu Union and United States to impose extra sanctions in opposition to Belarus.
Protasevich has but to move on trial and the standing of the investigation in opposition to him is unclear.
The blogger, who fled Belarus in 2019, had labored as an editor on the Poland-based Nexta Are living channel at the Telegram messenger app.
The channel, which is overtly antagonistic to Lukashenko, performed the most important position in broadcasting and coordinating large opposition protests in 2020.
The mass protests had been sparked by means of anger over what the opposition mentioned was once a rigged presidential election that gave Lukashenko his 6th time period in energy.
Lukashenko denied stealing the election and cracked down laborious at the opposition, whose main individuals had been jailed or pressured to escape out of the country.
