Some of the people pardoned ahead of July 3 had been serving sentences under so-called “home chemistry,” the human rights center Viasna reports.
Human rights defenders note that for most of those pardoned, their prison terms were already nearing completion.
It should be recalled that on July 1, Aliaksandr Lukashenka signed a decree pardoning 32 people. It was reported that 28 of them had been convicted of what the authorities described as “extremist crimes.”