Convicted: Navalnas will spend 2 years and 8 months in the colony



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Alexei Navaln is sent to the colony for violations of a suspended sentence of one and a half years previously imposed. The court reduced the sentence to 2 years and 8 months because the opposition had already spent a year under house arrest. A. Navaln will serve his sentence in the general regime colony.

Lawyers for Kremlin critic Alexei Navaln will seek his release and reversal of a Moscow court’s verdict on Tuesday, replacing the opposition’s 3.5-year prison sentence with actual incarceration.

“Of course we complain,” Navaln lawyer Olga Michailova told Interfax.

We will also address the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on Europe [Žmogaus Teisių Teismo, EŽTT] non-compliance, “he added.

Navaln has been charged with violating the terms of a probation sentence imposed on him in an embezzlement case in 2014 for failing to register with the Russian Prison Service twice a month in Germany, where he has been suffering severe poisoning since August.

On Tuesday, the Moscow City Court heard the case of A. Navaln. Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Commission has asked the court to commute Navaln to an actual sentence of 3.5 years in prison for violating the terms of his probation in a fraud case in 2014, which required Navaln to appear before the Prison Service. Russian twice a month. .

Judge Natalia Repnikova, announcing the sentence, ordered the replacement of the probation sentence imposed in 2014 by a real prison in a general correctional colony, but given the time she spent in custody, she will have to stay there for two years and eight months. .

This verdict will almost certainly be appealed.

Navaln’s team immediately called on their supporters to take to the streets in central Moscow to protest.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navaln said at a court hearing on Tuesday that the custody institution’s board’s demand to be sent to prison for violations of the terms of a one-and-a-half year suspended sentence is illegal and demanded his release.

“I demand his immediate release. I KNOW [Rusijos federalinės bausmių vykdymo tarnybos (FSIN) pareiškimas] “Illegal,” Navalnas said at a hearing in a Moscow court.

“I was fatally offended by survival, and good people, pilots and doctors helped me survive. And then I did not hide, I did not choose to live in any bunker with protection, and then the worst happened: I dared to investigate an attempt to poison myself, we showed and proved that Putin, through the FSB, was responsible for the assassination attempt, “he said a Kremlin critic in court Tuesday Navalnas, speaking of the August 20 poisoning and his investigation, the findings of which were published in December.

“It turned out that to deal with a political opponent who has no television or political party, it is enough to kill him with a chemical weapon.

“Everyone was convinced that he (Putin – ed.) Was just an official who had accidentally found himself in the presidency, had never participated in a debate in his life and that his only method was to try to kill people,” Putin said. of the Russian president.

“And no matter how much Putin tries to play geopolitics, the resentment he feels for me is that he will go down in history as poison.”

Here was Alexander the Liberator or Yaroslav the Wise, and here this man will go down in history as poison for shorts. I am protected by the police, half of Moscow is closed because we have been able to show that it requires stealing the shorts of the opponents and staining them with a chemical weapon, “Navaln said, recalling one of the episodes of the investigation: his conversation with a FSB officer admitting poisoned Navalno shorts.

The opposition also criticized the economic policies followed by the current government. He also urged his followers not to be afraid and disobey the existing government: “illegal government and not to be deceived by the prosecutor’s uniform and the judge’s mantle.”

“In this case, it is everyone’s duty to disobey the laws that the cloak represents,” Navalnas said, adding that “all countries will not intervene behind bars.”

Mr. Navaln also recalled that the European Court of Human Rights had asked for a review of the Yves Rocher case, which the Russian courts had not done.

“There are many good things in Russia today, and the best are the same people who are not afraid, who do not look down, do not look at the table and surely they will not give a handful of officials in our country who have decided to change it for vineyards and water discos. I do not admit the accusations that have been made against me and I demand that they release me immediately, “concluded A. Navalnas in his speech.

Over the past two weekends, tens of thousands of people have protested in Moscow and other cities across the country against the 44-year-old detention of an anti-corruption activist. The police arrested thousands of people during the protests.

On Tuesday, protective measures were dramatically tightened at the Moscow Palace of Justice, where a judge is currently deciding whether to impose a royal prison sentence on Mr. Navalnas for violating the conditions of probation. Law enforcement and the National Guard detained at least 200 people.

The case became a serious challenge for the Kremlin and prompted calls for new Western sanctions against the government of President Vladimir Putin.

Navaln added that the political fight would continue in the event of a court ruling.

“It is everyone’s responsibility to fight this system. And it is my duty to fight,” he said at the hearing.

Navaln was arrested at the Moscow airport on January 17, less than an hour after returning to Russia from Germany, where he was being treated for his nerve paralyzing substance Novičiok, created by Soviet scientists after his poisoning last summer.

The opposition accuses the Federal Security Service (FSB) of carrying out the attack on Putin’s instructions. The Kremlin categorically denies it.

Corruption investigations

A. Navalnas is accused of violating the conditions of the probation sentence that was imposed on him in the embezzlement case in 2014, as he did not come to Germany to register with the Russian Prison Service twice a month.

On parole, Navaln spent a year under house arrest. His brother Oleg is serving his entire prison sentence.

Opposition lawyers told AFP that he now faces up to two and a half years in prison because he served part of his sentence under house arrest.

Navaln, who has become Putin’s most prominent critic of Russia in the past decade, and his supporters believe the 2014 case was a retaliation by the government for his political activities. They say the Kremlin is now trying to shut it down.

Although he has never held elective office, Navaln has earned a reputation for investigating the corruption that unmasks the lavish lifestyle of the Russian elite.

Two days after his arrest, his team announced an investigation into a luxury property on the Black Sea that Navaln said was turned over to Putin through a billion-dollar scheme funded by his close allies leading in state-owned companies. .

The study was published alongside a YouTube video that was viewed by more than 100 million people. together.

Navaln’s arrest and corruption allegations have sparked protests across the country for the past two weekends. During the action last Sunday, the police closed down central Moscow and detained more than 5.4 thousand. people is a one-day record.

The West condemned Navaln’s arrest and the mass arrests during the street protests.

The United States and the European Union have called for Navalna’s immediate release and condemned the police violence against the protesters.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell will raise the Navaln issue during his visit to Moscow this week.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, for his part, said the case was an “internal matter” and added: “We will not allow anyone to interfere.”



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