Court in Moscow upholds prison term for Navalny
A court in Russia has upheld a ruling to imprison opposition figure Alexei Navalny, but shortened his original jail term by six weeks.
In a Moscow court, Judge Dmitry Balashov dismissed on Saturday Navalny’s appeal against a decision to imprison him.
Earlier this month, Navalny was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for breaking the terms of a suspended sentence he had received seven years ago in an embezzlement case.
The court said Navalny violated the term when he was airlifted to Germany for treatment in August 2020.
The judge, however, subtracted the 10 months Navalny had spent under house arrest from the recent prison sentence.
The opposition figure would in fact serve two years and eight months in prison, his lawyer said, before they appeal.
Navalny said the Saturday ruling and the legal process to imprison him was “absurd.”
Prosecutors lashed out at him, saying Navalny acted as if he was above the law and had “an exclusive right to do as he pleases.”
Navalny had also called the court hearing a “performance.”
Last month, Russian police detained Navalny on arrival at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport from Germany, five months after he was transferred to a hospital in Berlin to be treated for what the West alleged had been a nerve agent attack by Russia.
Western countries have repeatedly called for his release and threatened Moscow with possible sanctions.
Russia has rejected the allegations, saying the West is exploiting the case for political reasons and using it as a pretext to impose more sanctions against Russia.
In reaction to the latest ruling in Moscow, Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics said the decision was at odds with a call by the European Court of Human Rights this week to free Navalny.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin had nothing to do with the Navalny case.
“It is absolutely none of our business,” Peskov said Saturday.
Earlier this week, Europe’s rights court ruled that Russia must immediately release the Russian opposition figure.
EU foreign ministers are due to meet with two top aides to Navalny in Brussels on Sunday.
Tensions between Brussels and Moscow heightened after the Kremlin expelled three European diplomats for taking part in pro-Navalny protests in Moscow.
In a retaliatory and coordinated move on the same day, Germany, Poland, and Sweden expelled three Russian diplomats.
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