Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny sentenced to 9 years in prison

A Russian court on Tuesday sentenced jailed Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny to nine years in a maximum-security prison on new embezzlement and contempt of court charges. The verdict has been seen as an attempt to keep President Vladimir Putin’s most ardent critic in prison for as long as possible.

Immediately after the end of the day-long hearing, his lawyers, Olga Mikhailova and Vadim Kobzev, were also briefly detained by police, according to Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. The attorneys were talking to the media outside the penal colony where Navalny is being held when police made people disperse and took the lawyers away in a police van before eventually releasing them.

“The whole world knows that this trial has nothing to do with the law,” Navalny’s ally Ruslan Shaveddinov said in a live commentary of the court hearing on YouTube immediately after the sentence was announced. “We see that Alexei will be held in prison for many more years, they hope to do that. We can’t turn a blind eye to this as we see that everything is headed toward a very sad end of our country.”

Navalny was jailed last year for two and a half years in a penal colony on old fraud charges after surviving an attempt to poison him with Novichok, a military-grade nerve agent that he blames on the Kremlin.

A judge ruled on Tuesday that Navalny would also have to pay a fine of 1.2 million roubles ($11,500). Navalny can appeal the ruling.

In this trial, the opposition leader was accused of disrespecting the court in last year’s libel case against war veteran Ignat Artemenko and of large-scale fraud for allegedly misusing donations received by his anti-corruption foundation. Navalny and his team said the charges were fabricated to silence him and slammed the trials as a sham.

The prosecution has requested to transfer him to a maximum-security prison because he had committed “crimes” while in the penal colony. His team is worried that this will reduce already limited access to Navalny as he is likely to be transferred to a far corner of the country.

“Without public protection, Alexei will be face to face with those who have already tried to kill him,” Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh tweeted ahead of the hearing. “And nothing will stop them from trying again. Therefore, we are now talking not only about Alexei’s freedom but also about his life.”

“It will be practically impossible to access it and keep contact with Alexei,” she added.

Navalny’s supporters have criticised the authorities’ decision to move the proceedings from a court in Moscow, saying it has effectively limited access to the proceedings for the media and supporters.

• 9 years
• Alexei Navalny
• Kremlin critic
• sentenced
• prison