Belarus Journalist Imprisoned for Republishing Muhammad Cartoons Left Waiting

MINSK, Belarus —  Freedom could be years away for Aleksandr Sdvizhkov, the Belarusian journalist sentenced to three years of hard labor for republishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked mass demonstrations and anti-Western violence across the Muslim world.

Sdvizhkov is currently being held with no means of communication at the Belarusian Interior Ministry’s transfer prison in Minsk, said Olexei Korol, co-founder of Zgoda (Consensus) newspaper, which published the cartoons.

“No one is allowed to visit him,” Korol said.

Belarusian strongman President Aleksandr Lukashenko shut down Zgoda in March 2006 after Sdvizhkov decided to re-print the cartoons that portrayed the founder of Islam, including one showing the prophet, with a bomb in his turban.

The 12 cartoons first appeared in the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005 and outraged Muslims who saw them as blasphemous. Last week Danish media republished the controversial images to show solidarity with the cartoonist, a day after police revealed an alleged plot to kill him. Islamic tradition prohibits images of Muhammad and other prophets.

In January a Minsk court sentenced Sdvizhkov to three years of hard labor in a penal colony for his decision to reprint the cartoons. No one knows when the Belarusian Supreme Court will get around to hearing Sdvizhkov’s appeal...