Russian court jails Navalny as over 1,400 protesters detained
MOSCOW: More than 1,400 protesters were detained by Russian authorities during rallies supporting Alexei Navalny, a civil monitoring group said Wednesday, after the Kremlin’s most prominent critic was jailed for nearly three years amid international condemnation.
The court’s decision Tuesday to turn a 2014 suspended sentence into real jail time will see the 44-year-old anti-corruption campaigner — who accuses Moscow of poisoning him last year — serve a lengthy prison term.
Britain, France, Germany, the US and the European Union (EU) denounced the ruling and called for his immediate release, as Moscow accused the West of interfering in its affairs.
By early Wednesday, 1,408 people had been detained across Russian cities — mostly in Moscow and Saint Petersberg — the civil monitoring group OVDInfo said. Many were detained before Navalny’s sentence.
Navalny’s supporters had earlier called for more demonstrations against the decision after thousands joined nationwide protests against his arrest over the last two weekends.
The case is presenting one of the most serious challenges to the Kremlin in years, with some in the West calling for new sanctions against Russia.
Judge Natalya Repnikova ordered a suspended three-anda-half-year sentence Navalny received on fraud charges in 2014 to be changed to time in a penal colony, an AFP journalist at the courthouse said. He was accused of violating parole conditions by refusing to check in with prison officials and was arrested when he flew back to Moscow on Jan 17 from Germany, where he spent months recovering from a poisoning.
Navalny said it was impossible to make the appointments while abroad, but the judge said he had skipped meetings prior to the poisoning.