Belarus jails journalist over prophet cartoons

A journalist in ex-Soviet Belarus was sentenced Friday to three years in prison for printing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh), his former editor said.

Alexander Sdvizhkov, 49, was sentenced after being found guilty of breaking laws against inciting racial or religious hatred, according to Alexei Karol, editor of the now defunct newspaper Zgoda.

Charges were first filed against Sdvizhkov, the weekly's deputy editor, in February 2006 after he took the decision to print the cartoons.

In the event the cartoons were never published as Zgoda's management blocked distribution. But prosecutors started proceedings and closed down the title in March 2006.

The cartoons were copies of those that sparked demonstrations across the world after publication in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005.

Sdvizhkov fled to Russia, but was arrested on his return in November 2007.

The government in Belarus, situated between Russia and the European Union, is frequently attacked by human rights organizations and Western governments as repressive.

The OSCE's representative for media freedom sharply criticized the sentence.

"In 21st century Europe, it is shocking to see an editor arrested, tried behind closed doors and punished beyond any acceptable limits only for reprinting cartoons produced elsewhere and that have been published everywhere," the OSCE's Miklos Haraszti said in a statement.

"Persecution of journalists for trying to inform the public on important issues is a misuse of hate speech laws. In fact, the Belarus government has used the international controversy around the cartoons as a pretext to eliminate a critical voice from public life," he added.

International media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said: "It is highly likely that this was just a pretext for punishing an opposition journalist. The circumstances of his arrest reinforce that interpretation."