Kyiv, Ukraine: A Belarusian activist who stabbed himself in his neck two months ago to protest political oppression and the threat of authority to demand his relatives be sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison Monday.
A court in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, found Stepsan Latypau, 41, guilty of violating public order, against the police and fraud, said Viasna Human Rights.
Latpau also has to pay a fine of around $ 3,500.
In June, Latpau used a pen to cause a wound on his neck as he sat in court at home to the defendant.
The video posted online showed him to be taken out of the courthouse and put into an ambulance.
He was hospitalized and operated, but the day after the operation he was placed back to pre-trial detention.
Before stabbing himself, Latpau told his father during the court process that investigators threatened to open a criminal case against relatives and colleagues if he failed to admit his mistakes.
He has been in prison since September, when he was arrested during a large protest against Belarus authoritarian leader, President Alexander Lukashenko.
Protests triggered by Lukashenko won the sixth term in August elections rejected by opposition as cheating.
Lukashenko responded to a demonstration, the biggest showing 200,000 people, with repression who saw more than 35,000 people arrested and thousands of people were beaten by the police.
Overcoming the court on Thursday, Latpau described how the police beat him in detention and use a plastic bag to strangle him.
“I cried, struggling to breathe in a plastic bag and they just laughed, ‘” he said.
“The masked men beat me with their hands, their feet and use Truncheon, they beat me simultaneously and then one by one.
They beat me with fists and palms on my ear, and it felt like a hand grenade exploded in my head.
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