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Russian rock star Boris Grebenshchikov calls for release of Ales Byalyatski

Russian rock legend Boris Grebenshchikov has signed Amnesty International's online petition calling on Alyaksandr Lukashenka to immediately release Ales Byalyatski, chairman of a Belarusian human rights organization called Vyasna (Spring), BelaPAN said.

Mr. Grebenshchikov writes that while supporting the demands of Amnesty International, he asks Mr. Lukashenka to immediately release Ales Byalyatski and drop all charges against him, according to Amnesty International.

Mr. Grebenshchikov has already signed a number of petitions demanding the release of political prisoners in Belarus, the organization notes.

Amnesty International invited people to sign the petition in support of Mr. Byalyatski as part of its global letter writing marathon, Write for Rights. Every December, hundreds of thousands of people around the world mark International Human Rights Day (December 10) by taking part in the campaign and writing letters against politically motivated persecution and other human rights violations.

Amnesty International believes that the imprisonment of Mr. Byalyatski is intended to prevent him from working to defend human rights and considers him to be a prisoner of conscience, the petition says.

"Ales Bialiatski [Byalyatski] did not receive a fair trial," the petition says. "Some of the evidence presented against him was unauthenticated or anonymous and the questioning of some witnesses did not relate to the charges."

Ales Byalyatski, who is vice president of the International Federation for Human Rights, was arrested in Minsk on August 4, 2011.

On November 24, 2011, he was sentenced to four and a half years in prison on a charge of large-scale tax evasion. The charge stemmed from information about his bank accounts abroad, which was thoughtlessly provided by authorities in Lithuania and Poland under interstate legal assistance agreements. During his trial, Mr. Byalyatski insisted that the money transferred by various foundations to his bank accounts abroad had been intended to finance Vyasna's activities and therefore could not be viewed as his income subject to taxation.