A display screen reveals the already imprisoned Russian opposition determine Alexei Navalny (2L) as he listens to his verdict over a collection of extremism expenses on the IK-6 penal colony, a maximum-security jail some 250 kilometres (155 miles) east of Moscow, within the settlement of Melekhovo within the Vladimir area on August 4, 2023.
Alexander Nemenov | Afp | Getty Photos
Kremlin opposition chief Alexei Navalny was sentenced to 19 extra years in jail after being discovered responsible in a Russian court docket on a collection of expenses, his workforce confirmed on Friday.
Navalny confronted expenses of inciting and financing “extremist exercise” and “rehabilitating Nazi ideology,” expenses he and his supporters reject.
In a social media put up on Thursday, Navalny mentioned that he anticipated to obtain a “Stalinist” jail time period. He has additionally condemned Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, calling it “probably the most silly and mindless struggle of the twenty first century.”
Navalny, one in every of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critics, was already serving two jail sentences. A nine-year jail sentence on expenses of embezzlement and fraud and greater than two years for parole violation.
Friday’s sentence marks Navalny’s third and longest jail time period.
United Nations Human Rights Chief Volker Turk known as for Navalny’s rapid launch and slammed the “obscure and overly broad expenses.”
“The brand new sentence imposed at the moment on opposition determine Alexei Navalny raises renewed severe considerations about judicial harassment and instrumentalization of the court docket system for political functions in Russia,” Turk wrote in a press release.
Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny is seen on a display screen through video hyperlink from the IK-2 corrective penal colony in Pokrov earlier than a court docket listening to to contemplate an attraction towards his jail sentence, in Moscow, Russia Might 17, 2022.Â
Evgenia Novozhenina | Reuters
Navalny has been held in a distant penal colony since 2021. His detention got here after spending practically half a 12 months in Germany recovering from a nerve agent poisoning in August 2020. Â
A month after his poisoning, the German authorities mentioned that the Russian dissident was uncovered to a chemical nerve agent, including the toxicology report supplied “unequivocal proof.” The nerve agent was within the household of Novichok, which was developed by the Soviet Union. Toxicology exams carried out in France and Sweden additionally got here to the identical conclusion.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied having a task in Navalny’s poisoning.
In March 2021, the US sanctioned seven members of the Russian authorities for the alleged poisoning and subsequent detention of Navalny. On the time, the sanctions had been the primary to focus on Moscow beneath President Joe Biden’s administration.
