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Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said
Bialiatski and other activists sentenced in the same trial had been
unfairly convicted, calling the verdict "appalling".
"We must do everything to fight against this shameful injustice &
free them," she said on Twitter.
Prosecutors had asked the Minsk court to give Bialiatski, who denied
the charges, a 12-year sentence.
He and three co-defendants were charged with financing protests and
smuggling money.
Belarusian state news agency Belta confirmed the sentences,
including a decade in jail for Bialiatski.
Aged 60, Bialiatski is a co-founder of the Viasna human rights group
and one of the most prominent of hundreds of Belarusians who were
jailed during a crackdown on months of anti-government protests that
erupted in the summer of 2020 and continued into 2021.
Viasna took a leading role in providing legal and financial
assistance to those jailed. Mass demonstrations took place after
long-time leader Alexander Lukashenko was declared the winner of the
2020 presidential election.
"The allegations against our colleagues are linked to their human
rights activity, the Viasna human rights centre's provision of help
to the victims of politically motivated persecution," Viasna has
said of the case.
Bialiatski was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last October for his
work on human rights and democracy, sharing it with Russian rights
group Memorial and Ukraine's Center for Civil Liberties.
He had been arrested in 2021 along with two co-workers from Viasna.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Shounak Dasgupta)
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