MINSK (AFP) -- A opposition leader seeking to unseat Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko will likely be in jail during March 19 presidential elections after he was sentenced Thursday to 15 days' detention for organizing an unauthorized pre-election rally.

Vintsuk Vyachorka, leader of the opposition Belarus Popular Front and second in command in the presidential campaign of opposition candidate Alexander Milinkevich, the main challenger to Lukashenko, blasted the sentence as a political ruse designed to subvert the opposition campaign.

"It is a political trial," Vyachorka said before the Minsk tribunal where he was sentenced after the panel heard testimony from police officers who took part in his arrest at an opposition rally on Wednesday.

"I am guilty of nothing. The election law permits representatives of a candidate running for election to organize meetings with voters," Vyachorka said.

Also Thursday, 10 more activists of Milinkevich's campaign and a local man who came to a meeting were sentenced to 15 days in jail by two Minsk courts.

"The election campaign is cynical and illegitimate, but we will not be frightened. We will fight until we win," Milinkevich said.

"These quasi-trials are aimed at decapitating my headquarters. The authorities fear us, because our campaign's success is obvious," he added.

Another member of the Milinkevich campaign, Vladimir Shantsev, was sentenced on Tuesday to 15 days in jail after he organized a rally in the eastern city of Mogilev which authorities also said had not been authorized.

The jailings were among the latest actions taken against opposition supporters in the run up to the March 19 vote, widely expected to be carried by Lukashenko. The United States has called the Lukashenko regime "the last dictatorship in Europe."