In response to Russian state-owned information company Tass, the Lefortovo court docket in Moscow convicted Navalny over allegations that he stole from his Anti-Corruption Basis, in addition to contempt of court docket.
Prosecutors had introduced they had been looking for a sentence of 13 years in jail.
Tuesday’s sentence was handed down on the Pokrov penal colony by a visiting session of the Lefortovo court docket.
“Navalny dedicated fraud, i.e. the theft of another person’s property by deception,” Choose Margarita Kotova learn out within the verdict, Tass reported.
Whereas the choose learn out the accusations in opposition to him, the 45-year-old Navalny reduce a gaunt determine beside his attorneys in a room full of jail safety officers, in keeping with Reuters. He appeared unfazed, wanting down as he flipped by court docket paperwork.
The opposition chief was detained in February 2021 after his arrival in Moscow from Berlin, Germany, the place he had spent a number of months recovering from poisoning with nerve agent Novichok — an assault he blames on Russian safety providers and on Russian President Vladimir Putin himself.
In January, Russia added Navalny and his prime aides to the “extremist and terrorist” federal registry, in keeping with the Russian Federal Service for Monetary Monitoring. His Anti-Corruption Basis (FBK) was additionally banned by the Russian courts final yr as an “extremist” group.
Whereas in jail, Navalny has denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by way of social media, advocating anti-war protests throughout the nation as “the spine of the motion in opposition to struggle and dying,” in keeping with Reuters.
The responsible verdict handed to Navalny comes amid a rising crackdown on political dissent in Russia.
The regulation, in keeping with the Committee to Defend Journalists, makes it a criminal offense to disseminate “faux” details about the invasion of Ukraine, with a penalty of as much as 15 years in jail for anybody convicted.
Days after ending his starvation strike in April, Navalny’s community of regional places of work for his political motion had been “formally disbanded,” in keeping with his chief of workers Leonid Volkov.
