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Lukashenka praises judges who gave prison sentences to post-election protesters

Alyaksandr Lukashenka has welcomed the sentences that were handed out to former presidential candidates and other opposition activists over a post-election protest staged in Minsk on December 19, 2010.

“Despite the huge pressure from the outside, the judges conducted the trials of the organizers of the December 19 mass disorder competently, skillfully and in full accordance with the law,” the Belarusian leader said Friday, speaking at a government conference on measures to improve the performance of the courts of general jurisdiction.

“The culprits got the punishment they deserved,” Mr. Lukashenka noted, adding that the trials were evidence of the “high professional level of the Belarusian corps of judges and its determination to combat dangerous negative manifestations.”

According to Mr. Lukashenka, there have been a lot of important events in the life of the country and “the judiciary, as a branch of government, has not stayed aloof from the processes that take place in our society.”

More than 30 post-election protesters, including former presidential candidates Andrey Sannikaw, Mikalay Statkevich and Dzmitry Uss (Vus), were sentenced to prison terms of three to six years. //BelaPAN