Belarus sentences Japanese man to 7 years in jail for espionage

A court in Belarus has jailed a Japanese man for seven years for espionage after he was convicted of working on behalf of Japan's intelligence service.

Masatoshi Nakanishi, who has been in custody in Belarus since his arrest in July, was accused of taking thousands of photos of military and civilian facilities in the Belarusian-Ukrainian border area from 2018 to 2024 and sharing them with Japanese intelligence.

The Minsk City Court issued the sentence after a two-month trial that was held behind closed doors. Nakanishi was convicted of cooperating with a "special service, security and intelligence agency of a foreign state, involving actions knowingly aimed at harming the national security" of Belarus, the office of the country's prosecutor general said.

He was ordered to pay a fine equivalent to around €6,130. Belarusian authorities had rejected a request by the Japanese embassy in Belarus to attend the proceedings.

The embassy told Japanese media outlet NHK that Tokyo had been in contact with Minsk to demand Nakanishi's immediate release.

Nakanishi had lived in Gomel, Belarus' second-largest city, since 2018. According to Belarusian state-controlled media, he taught Japanese at a local university.

A 15-minute programme focusing on Nakanishi's alleged espionage entitled The Failure of a Samurai from Tokyo aired on state television last September. Japanese authorities criticised the programme at the time, saying that it infringed on Nakanishi’s rights.

Belarus' Viasna Human Rights Centre, an NGO, declared Nakanishi a political prisoner. The group says that Belarus now has more than 1,200 political prisoners in custody, among them 36 foreign citizens.

Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya criticised the sentencing.

"Like other political prisoners, he is being dehumanised by regime propaganda," she wrote in a post on X on Monday.

Belarus' authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled the country with an iron fist for over 30 years while relying on subsidies and support from Russia, allowed the Russian military to use his country’s territory to send troops into neighbouring Ukraine in 2022.

Lukashenko also has allowed Russia to deploy some of its tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory.

Japan has placed sanctions on Russia and Belarus over Moscow's war in Ukraine.