Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: A kangaroo court in Russia on Friday convicted imprisoned opposition leader and chief Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny of alleged extremism and sentenced him to a 19-year jail term, the media reported on Saturday.
The move came amid a historic crackdown on dissenting voices as Moscow’s assault on Ukraine stretches into its second year.
Navalny, 47, is already serving a nine-year term on a variety of charges, including fraud and contempt of court, that he says were politically motivated. Friday’s was his fifth criminal conviction, which his supporters view as a deliberate Kremlin strategy to silence President Vladimir Putin’s most ardent opponent.
The fresh charges clamped on the popular politician related to his activities via Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation and statements by his top associates, who are viewed as bitter critics of President Putin.
The prosecution had demanded a 20-year prison sentence. Navalny had already said he expected to receive a lengthy term. He was also sentenced in 2021 to two and a half years in prison for a parole violation.
The trial in the alleged case of extremism took place behind closed doors in the penal colony east of Moscow where he is imprisoned. Navalny appeared in the courtroom wearing prison garb with a defiant smile on his face as some 40 of his supporters gathered there from across Russia, the media reported.
Navalny is President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest political foe and has exposed official corruption and organized major anti-Kremlin protests. He was arrested in January 2021 upon returning to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
His supporters say the extremism charges retroactively criminalized all of the anti-corruption foundation’s activities since its creation in 2011.
In 2021, Moscow outlawed the foundation and the vast network of Navalny’s offices in Russian regions as alleged extremist organizations, exposing anyone involved to possible prosecution.
Navalny rejected all the charges against him as politically motivated and accused the Kremlin of seeking to keep him behind bars for life.
In a Friday statement, Navalny called on Russians to “personally” resist and encouraged them to support political prisoners, distribute flyers or go to a rally.
Currently serving his sentence in a maximum-security prison — Penal Colony No. 6 in Melekhovo, about 230 kilometers east of Moscow—he has spent months in a tiny one-person cell, also called a “punishment cell,” for purported disciplinary violations, including alleged failure to properly button his prison clothes, appropriately introduce himself to a guard or to wash his face at a specified time.
“They want to frighten you, not me, and deprive you of the will to resist. You are being forced to surrender your Russia without a fight to a gang of traitors, thieves, and scoundrels who have seized power. Don’t lose the will to resist,” Navalny – who had mobilized the largest protests against President Vladimir Putin – wrote in a Facebook post.
The US State Department called the verdict “an unjust conclusion to an unjust trial,” while the European Union condemned what it called another politically motivated ruling and called for Navalny’s immediate release.
“His abuse shows Russia’s complete disregard for even the most basic of human rights,” British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly tweeted.