Russian court sentences Kremlin opponent Navalny to long prison

Alexei Navalny

The 45-year-old appeared in court with his lawyers.

(Photo: dpa)

Cologne, Moscow In another controversial trial against the imprisoned Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny, a Russian court sentenced the 45-year-old to nine years in a prison camp with particularly harsh prison conditions. Navalny was also sentenced to pay 1.2 million rubles (almost 10,500 euros).

According to the Interfax news agency, the judge found President Vladimir Putin’s best-known opponent guilty of fraud, among other things, in the proceedings, which were criticized as political staging. Navalny’s lawyers had demanded acquittal.

“We knew from the start that it was a pure show trial that was taking place. Now we have further, clear and reliable evidence of this,” says Nikolaos Gazeas, Alexej Navalny’s German lawyer. “What is happening in this arbitrary state is downright grotesque.”

The Russian prosecutor had previously requested that Navalny be transferred to a high-security prison for 13 years. She had stated that he had committed crimes in prison and had become a repeat offender.

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Navalny is already serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence in a prison camp east of Moscow for violating probation conditions. The 45-year-old was in court with his lawyers. He looked emaciated.

He listened to the court’s remarks without recognizable emotion while leafing through documents. Despite his prison sentence, Navalny recently called for protests against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

After his last court appearance on March 15, he was also unimpressed. “If prison is the price to pay for the human right to freedom of expression, then they can ask for 113 years. I will not distance myself from my words or actions,” he wrote on Instagram.

Poisoned with nerve agent

Navalny describes the accusation against himself as fictitious and politically motivated. Navalny was arrested on his return from Germany in January 2021 and convicted of violating the conditions of probation.

He collapsed on a domestic Russian flight in August 2020. First he was treated in Russia, then transferred to the Berlin Charité. There, poisoning with a nerve agent was determined. The government in Moscow has denied allegations that Russian authorities tried to kill President Vladimir Putin’s opponent.

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