Russia’s leading opposition figure Alexei Navalny, who has been behind bars since 2021, has been sentenced to nine more years in prison in a fraud case, British public broadcaster BBC reports.
The politician and anti-corruption activist was detained in 2021, when he returned to Russia, after surviving a poisoning by Novichok chemical weapon he blamed on the Kremlin. Navalny is already serving three and a half years in jail for breaking bail conditions while in hospital.
On Tuesday, March 22, a judge found him guilty of fraud and contempt of court as prosecutors accused him of stealing USD 4.7 million of donations given to his now banned organisations, including his anti-corruption foundation. The new sentence replaces his earlier jail term, so the opposition leader will now have to serve some seven years in a maximum-security prison, with much stricter conditions and far more remote than the jail in Pokrov east of Moscow where he has spent more than a year.
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Navalny, who has treated the trial was a sham case against a Kremlin opponent, wrote on Twitter tweeted that he and his supporters would continue to fight censorship to «bring the truth to the people of Russia», BBC reports.
Russia sentences Navalny to nine more years in prison
