Roman Protasevich, the Belarusian activist who was arrested after the government scrambled a jet fighter to divert his Ryanair flight from Greece, was sentenced to eight years in prison.
The Minsk Regional Court in the Belarusian capital Wednesday found Mr. Protasevich guilty of organizing riots, calling for acts of terrorism and insulting Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, among other crimes, Belarus’s state news agency Belta reported. The dissident blogger will now stay under house arrest until the court’s verdict comes into force, prosecutor Natalya Sokolova told journalists, the news agency reported, when he will be taken to serve his sentence in a high-security penal colony. She didn’t specify when that would happen.
