Ales Bialiatski has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for the second time

Norwegian lawmakers nominated Belarusan imprisoned human rights defender Ales Bialiatski for the 2013 Nobel Prize again.

Both the fifty-year-old leader of the Human Rights Center “Viasna” and Russian rights defender Liudmila Alekseeva have been put forward for the award by two Norwegian lawmakers, reports BelaPAN.

"They have both defied authoritarian state structures and the illegal and illegitimate abuse of power," commented one of the two MPs, Jan Tore Sanner commented upon the nomination.

Ales Bialiatski, who is vice president of the International Federation for Human Rights, was nominated for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize, but missed out on the award, which was bestowed on the European Union. He was also nominated for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought due to the proposal made by a Polish MEP Jacek Saryusz-Wolski.

Let us recall that Ales Bialiatski was arrested in Minsk on August 4, 2011. Sentence to four and a half years in prison on a charge of large-scale tax evasion was passed to him on November 24, 2011 by the Pershamaiski District Court of Minsk. At the moment the human rights defender serves his sentence in the Babruisk colony #2.