Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko pardoned 15 prisoners on Friday in what state media called a humanitarian gesture, two days before an election in which he is set to extend his 31-year rule.

Belarusians go to the polls this weekend to vote in a presidential election that is almost certain to see incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko returned to office for a seventh term. The country was rocked by the largest mass protests since independence in the massively falsified previous elections in August 2020,

Belarus has more than 1,000 political prisoners, many of them detained during the mass protests that erupted after Lukashenko’s contentious re-election in 2020