Belarusian authorities on Friday convicted the chief editor of a prominent independent regional newspaper of “discrediting the Republic of Belarus” and sentenced him to four years in prison, as the country continues its crackdown on dissent.
A court in Molodechno, a city in central Belarus, also ordered Aliaksandr Mantsevich, chief editor of the popular Regionalnaya Gazeta newspaper, to pay a fine of 94,000 Belarusian rubles (about $30,000), the Belarusian Association of Journalists reported.
The authorities accused Mantsevich and his newspaper of using content that had been declared extremist — a label loosely applied in recent years to any materials critical of the Belarusian government.
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