Putin critic Alexei Navalny handed 19 year jail term on ‘extremism’ charges

A staunch critic of Vladimir Putin, who suspects he was almost killed by the Kremlin in 2020, has been handed a huge prison sentence.

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny appears on a screen set up at a courtroom of the Moscow City Court in 202

Vladimir Putin’s staunchest critic has been sentenced to a 19 year prison term after being found guilty of extremism.

The charges are widely viewed as politically motivated.

The sentence against Alexei Navalny has been slammed as a “sham,” and “unacceptable,” with the United Nations demanding the opposition campaigner’s immediate release.

Mr Navalny was the victim of a suspected poisoning in 2020 which he blamed on the Kremlin.

A screen shows the already imprisoned Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny (2L) as he listens to his verdict over a series of extremism charges at the IK-6 penal colony, a maximum-security prison some 250 kilometres (155 miles) east of Moscow. (Photo by Alexander NEMENOV / AFP)

The trial took place in a makeshift closed court in the penal colony where Mr Navalny is being held in Melekhovo, 240km east of Moscow.

It’s thought the Russian Government were wary of drawing attention to the case if he were tried in a proper court in Moscow.

Mr Navalny was already serving a nine-year term for parole violations, fraud and contempt of court.

It could mean he won’t be released until the 2050s when he is in seventies. Mr Navalny has said the sentence term is “Stalinist” and he fully expects to get another decade in jail in an upcoming trial.

Alexei Navalny is a popular opposition leader and Putin critic. (Photo by Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP)

On Friday, local time, Mr Navalny was handed the huge term after being convicted of founding and funding an extremist organisation and activities.

An AFP journalist watching the court session in a press centre at his prison said Navalny smiled as the judge read the verdict and hugged another defendant before the transmission was cut.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has no timefor Alexi Navalny. (Photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko / POOL / AFP)

In a tweet hours before the sentencing, Mr Navalny’s account said: “When the figure is announced, please show solidarity with me and other political prisoners by thinking for a minute why such an exemplary huge term is necessary. Its main purpose is to intimidate. You, not me”.

Penal colony IK-6 where jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was transferred to in March 2022, near the village of Melekhovo outside the town of Vladimir, where opposition leader Alexei Navalny was on trial. (Photo by Natalia KOLESNIKOVA / AFP)

Prison term slammed

European Council President Charles Michel slammed the sentence and conviction.

“The latest verdict in yet another sham trial against Alexei Navalny is unacceptable.

“This arbitrary conviction is the response to his courage to speak critically against the Kremlin’s regime.”

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called the verdict an “injustice”.

“Putin fears nothing more than standing up against war and corruption and for democracy- even from a prison cell. He will not silence critical voices with this.”

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said the conviction was based on “overly broad charges of ‘extremism’, and followed a closed trial on the premises of the prison”.

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny appears on a screen set up at a courtroom of the Moscow City Court in 2022. (Photo by Alexander NEMENOV / AFP)

“The new sentence imposed today on opposition figure Alexei Navalny raises renewed serious concerns about judicial harassment and instrumentalisation of the court system for political purposes in Russia,” Mr Turk said in a statement.

“I call on the Russian authorities to take measures to respect these obligations by immediately ceasing violations of Navalny’s human rights and release him,” Mr Turk said.

Mr Navalny was arrested in 2021 after arriving in Moscow from Germany, where he had been recovering from a poisoning attack he blames on the Kremlin.

Since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year, around 20,000 people have been arrested across the country for various actions against the war, including social media posts, he said.

Some have been jailed for allegedly spreading false information about the Russian military, and hundreds more have been fined for “discrediting” the Russian army.

Mr Turk also pointed to a sharp increase in the use of espionage and treason charges to try to convict people “merely exercising their human rights”.