Moscow, SAEDNEWS, Feb. 20: A Moscow appeal court on Saturday upheld a prison sentence imposed on chief Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny after he returned to Russia from Germany last month. Judge Dmitry Balashov rejected Navalny’s appeal against the February 2 ruling, which turned a 2014 suspended sentence on embezzlement charges into real jail time.
The ruling came even as the country faced a top European rights court’s order to immediately free the Kremlin’s most prominent foe. The Russian government has rebuffed the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECHR) demand to free Navalny immediately, describing its ruling on Tuesday as unlawful and “inadmissible” meddling in Russia’s affairs.
Navalny, a 44-year-old anti-corruption campaigner who has emerged as President Vladimir Putin’s most well-known opponent, was arrested in January when he returned to Russia after months in Germany recovering from a nerve agent poisoning he blames on the Kremlin.
He was detained for violating parole conditions of the 2014 suspended sentence and it was then turned into a custodial sentence.
Navalny and his supporters say the rulings and several other cases against him are a pretext to silence his corruption exposes and quash his political ambitions (Source: AlJazeera).
Navalny's Top Associate Released from the Jail
