Anger as Putin opponent is jailed
MOSCOW — Russia provoked international condemnation Thursday after the opposition leader Alexei Navalny was jailed for five years following a politically tinged trial his allies claimed was designed to silence his criticism of the Kremlin.
Britain, the United States and the European Union expressed their concern over the verdict as anger spread through Russian opposition circles and beyond.
A judge in the provincial town of Kirov dismissed claims that Navalny’s prosecution was political and found him guilty of stealing timber worth over $500,000 while he was an adviser to the regional governor in 2009.
The politician and anti-corruption campaigner was handcuffed in the courtroom, as was his co-defendant, businessman Petr Ofitserov, who was sentenced to four years. Both men were taken to a local detention centre.
Navalny came to prominence as the most charismatic leader of antiKremlin street protests in 2011 and 2012. He had registered this week to be a candidate in Moscow’s mayoral elections in September and has not excluded the possibility of running for the presidency in 2018.
The sentence was greeted with outrage by his supporters and criticism in mainstream political circles.
Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister who maintains ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, suggested that Navalny had been deliberately removed from the political scene.
“The verdict looks less like a punishment than something intended to isolate him from public life, (and) the election process,” he said.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, said: “I am convinced that using courts with the aim of fighting political opponents is unacceptable. Everything I know about this case ... unfortunately confirms we do not have independent courts.”