Jailed Belarusian democracy activist Ales Bialiatski's Nobel Peace Prize win is "an important recognition", Italy's foreign ministry tweeted on Friday.
"NobelPeacePrize 2022 awarded to Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski, the Russian organisation @MemorialMoscow and the Ukrainian Centre for Civil Liberties," read the tweet.
"Important recognition of the courage to affirm #CivilLiberties and protect free speech against authoritarianism," the tweet underlined.
Norwegian Nobel committee chair, Berit Reiss-Andersen, called for the release of Bialiatski, 60, who was detained last year on tax evasion charges widely considered to be politically motivated.
Bialiatski, a founder of the pro-democracy movement that began in Belarus in the 1980s, earlier served a prison sentence from October 2011 to June 2014 for tax evasion and has been arrested multiple times.
The Nobel committee said Bialiatski had “devoted his life to promoting democracy and peaceful development in his home country.”
