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.
| Does sorta seem like a convenient excuse, doesn't it? Bet every newspaper editor in Belarus got the message. |
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.