Watchdog

MINSK -- A court in Minsk has sentenced a youth activist to 12 days in jail for publicly supporting an imprisoned former presidential candidate.

The court found Paval Vinahradau guilty on April 23 of holding an illegal protest.

Vinahradau was detained earlier in the day after he unfolded a poster with a picture of Mikalay Statkevich and the banned Belarusian national flag near a Minsk subway station.

Statkevich is serving his six-year prison term for "organizing mass disturbances" following authoritarian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka's reelection in December 2010.

Statkevich was sentenced almost two years ago.

Vinahradau pleaded not guilty but did not deny at his trial that he unfolded the poster and the flag.

Vinahradau's wife told RFE/RL on April 23 that her husband carried out his protest because he had heard that Statkevich was "under pressure" in prison.

Prosecutors have requested that Russian civil rights activist Konstantin Lebedev be sentenced to five years in prison.

Lebedev pleaded guilty at the start of his trial on April 21 to organizing mass disorders and he expressed remorse.

The judge said Lebedev's sentence will be announced on April 25.

Lebedev was accused of organizing violent protests on Moscow's Bolotnaya Square in May, 2012, along with opposition Left Front coordinator Sergei Udaltsov, activist Leonid Razvozzhayev and Georgian politician Givi Targamadze.

Last October, a pro-Kremlin television channel aired a documentary claiming that Targamadze met with Udaltsov to plan riots in Moscow.

Udaltsov, Lebedev, and Razvozzhayev were later charged with the protest in Moscow in May 2012.

Razvozzhayev was arrested in October; Udaltsov has been under house arrest.

In February, Russia issued an international arrest warrant for Targamadze.

Based on reporting by Interfax and RIA-Novosti