Belarus opposition leader's wife gets suspended jail term

A court in Belarus yesterday handed down a two-year suspended jail sentence to Irina Khalip, a journalist and the wife of opposition presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov, who was jailed for five years a day earlier.

Both court cases followed protests that erupted after elections - widely believed to have been rigged - returned the long-serving authoritarian ruler Alexander Lukashenko to the presidency last December.

Khalip will have to face the court again in two years, when the jail sentence could come into force, and in the interim she is not allowed to leave Minsk or be out of her house later than 10pm.

She was greeted outside the court by cheers from friends and well-wishers.

She called her husband a "national hero" and said she would now try to return her life to normal, for the sake of her 4-year-old son. "First, I'm going to write a letter to my husband," said Khalip, who has spent the past five months under house arrest.

"After that, I'm going to get a team of professionals in to sort out my flat, where for the last 3 months there have been KGB employees present, and I'm also going to change all of my locks, because the keys have changed hands as often as a village in the civil war. Only after all of that will I start on my appeal."

Khalip wrote articles highly critical of Lukashenko's regime for Novaya Gazeta, the Russian daily part-owned by Alexander Lebedev, proprietor of the Independent.

"This sentence has absolutely nothing to do with justice or courts," said Dmitry Muratov, its editor, who was on his way to Minsk to meet Khalip.

"She is being penalised for carrying out her duties as a journalist, and as a spouse," he said. She was a "hostage" of the regime, and had been told that she should not continue to write articles if she wanted to remain free, he said.

More than 700 people were arrested, of whom more than 20 have been jailed for organising or taking part in illegal protests. The authorities say these involved assaults and damage to property, while opposition leaders say the violence was started by government agents and riot police.

Khalip also said she doubted that her husband would spend his full five-year term in jail, but that the regime would seek to win concessions from the West in return for releasing him. In the past, Lukashenko has released political prisoners in exchange for loans and engagement from the West.

Europe has tried to reach out to the Belarusian dictator in recent years, promising financial aid if December's elections were free and fair, but in the aftermath of the protests, the European Union has imposed a travel ban on Lukashenko and 150 Belarusian officials.

- Independent