Germany on Wednesday sharply criticized the eight-year imprisonment of dissident journalist from Belarus Roman Protassevych, who was arrested in 2021 after the dramatic hijacking of the airliner in which he was flying, AFP reports.

“The sentence to Roman Protasevich is a new example of the brutal methods of the authorities in Belarus against democratic forces and independent media,” the German Foreign Ministry said on Twitter.

Journalist Roman Protasevich, founder of the Nexta TV channel, was sentenced to eight years in prison in Belarus on Wednesday, nearly two years after authorities in Minsk hijacked a Ryanair flight to arrest him, Reuters reported.

Along with two other people who were tried in absentia, Protasevich was charged with at least 1,586 crimes, according to Belta, the Belarusian state news agency.

The charges included organizing mass protests, preparing actions that seriously undermine public order, calling for sanctions against the Belarusian state, creating or leading an extremist group, and conspiring to overthrow the government.

Protasevich’s arrest at Minsk airport after the Ryanair plane was intercepted by the Belarusian air force and forced to land sparked international outrage in May 2021 and prompted new Western sanctions against the regime of Alexander Lukashenko.

Protasevich was on board a plane that took off from Greece, where the dissident was holidaying with his then-girlfriend, Russian Sofya Sapega, and was on his way to Lithuania, when air traffic controllers in Minsk informed the Ryanair pilots that the plane, which was on board the plane was called a bomb, information that quickly turned out to be false.