Belarus officer sentenced for leaking document on crackdown

<p>KYIV, Ukraine &mdash; A Belarusian military officer on Friday was sentenced to 18 years in prison for leaking a document related to the government’s crackdown on protests against the country’s authoritarian president.</p>
<p>The officer, Capt. Dzianis Urad, was accused of giving the media a copy of a government directive urging the military to help put down the demonstrations.</p>
<p>Belarus’ Supreme Court handed Urad an 18-year prison sentence and stripped him of his military rank for the actions that “hurt national security.”</p>
<p>Earlier this month, President Alexander Lukashenko has stripped 80 military and police officers of their ranks over their suspected links to the opposition.</p>
<p>Lukashenko, who has ruled the ex-Soviet nation for more than a quarter-century, has faced months of massive protests triggered by his re-election to a sixth term in an August vote that the opposition and some election workers said was rigged. </p>
<p>The Belarusian authorities have unleashed a harsh crackdown on protests demanding Lukashenko’s resignation. More than 34,000 people have been arrested in Belarus and many of them were brutally beaten. </p>
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