NAVALNY ALLY SENTENCED BY RUSSIA

Moscow, April 15: A Russian court on Thursday sentenced an ally of jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny to one year of community service for trying to enter the home of an alleged security agent he said took part in his poisoning. Navalny in Dec. said he had tricked an alleged chemical weapons expert with the Federal Security Service (FSB) into admitting that the domestic intelligence agency had sought to kill him last summer by placing poison in his underwear.

His aide Lyubov Sobol that month went to the alleged agent's home and rang his doorbell, after which Russian authorities opened a criminal probe into her for trespassing “with the use of violence or the threat to use it”. A Moscow court said on its Telegram channel Thursday that it had given her a suspended sentence of “correctional labour for a period of one year”.

It added that 10 percent of her wages would go to the state each month as part of her punishment.

Sobol had arrived at the court wearing a white T-shirt printed with red text reading: “Where is the criminal case over the poisoning of Navalny?”

After her sentencing she said on Twitter: “Meanwhile, a case into the attempted murder of Navalny has still not even been initiated.” Navalny's spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on Twitter that the ruling would not preclude Sobol from balloting in parliamentary polls this autumn.