|
Belarus Editor Jailed for Islam Cartoon
 MINSK, Belarus (AP) - A Belarus court sentenced a newspaper editor Friday to three years in prison for reprinting a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked worldwide riots when it was initially published in a Danish newspaper.In Vienna, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe protested the sentence and called for the release of Alexander Sdvizhkov, the former deputy editor of the small-circulation Zhoda newspaper. Security officers in Belarus launched an investigation of Sdvizhkov in February 2006 when he published the caricatures which had originally appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. President Alexander Lukashenko ordered the paper shut the following month, calling the publication of the cartoon ``a provocation against the state.'' Sdvizhkov was arrested and charged with ``inciting religious hatred'' in November 2007 when he returned to Belarus following several months of living in Russia and Ukraine.
Belarusian Islamic leader Ismail Voronovich called the sentence excessively harsh. The ex-Soviet republic is overwhelmingly Orthodox Christian; less than 1 percent of the country's 10 million is Muslim. Posted by: Steve White 2008-01-19 |
|
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=220071 |