Belarusian authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka has rejected a request for clemency filed by Sofia Sapega, a Russian citizen who is serving a six-year prison term in Belarus on charges related to civil disturbances that followed the 2020 presidential election.
Sapega was informed last week about the decision by the presidential commission on clemencies, her lawyer, Anton Hashynski, said on January 10.
Sapega filed the clemency request in June.
Sapega and her then-boyfriend, dissident blogger Raman Pratasevich, were immediately detained after their commercial flight from Athens to Vilnius was forced to land in Minsk in May 2021.
Sapega was accused of administering a channel on Telegram that published the personal data of Belarusian security forces. She was sentenced on May 6, and three days later Pratasevich announced he had married another woman.
Belarus said it had ordered the plane to land after an anonymous bomb threat. Evidence later revealed Belarusian officials conspired to fake the bomb threat as a pretense for diverting the plane so they could detain the two.
Pratasevich, who fled Belarus in 2019, worked as an editor at the Poland-based Nexta Live channel on Telegram. He was transferred to house arrest after his initial detainment. It is unclear if he is still under house arrest, and the status of the investigation against him also remains unclear.
He faces charges in connection with civil disturbances that followed a disputed presidential election in August 2020, an offense punishable by up to 15 years in prison. He was a key administrator of the Telegram channel Nexta-Live, which covered mass protests denouncing the official results of the election, which the opposition said was rigged.
Pratasevich made several appearances on Belarusian state television in 2021 that prompted the opposition and Western officials to accuse Lukashenka's regime of extracting video confessions under torture. The officials also called for his and Sapega's immediate release.
Lukashenka has denied stealing the election and has since cracked down hard on the opposition, whose leading members were jailed or forced to flee the country in fear of their safety.
