A Russian court today declared Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin’s main detractor, guilty of “defamation” of a World War II veteran today, hours after being sentenced on appeal to two and a half years in prison in another case. .
“Alexei Navalny committed the crime,” said Judge Vera Akimova when reading the statement of her decision, with the sentence to be announced at the end of the hearing.
In this case, the Public Prosecutor’s Office requested a fine of 950,000 rubles (about 10,600 euros) and demanded that a suspended sentence for the opponent be converted into a prison sentence.
Navalny is accused of publishing in 2020 a video in which he calls “protagonists” and “traitors” the protagonists of a recording defending the constitutional changes promoted by Russian President Vladimir Putin, which included a 95-year-old veteran.
The elderly man’s grandson sued the opponent, who refused to acknowledge his guilt, and accused family members of trying to take advantage of the situation by “commercializing” his image.
Also this Saturday, the Russian justice confirmed Nalvalny’s effective prison sentence for violating judicial control measures, but reduced his sentence.
According to AFP, the judge in a Moscow court, Dmitri Balashov, reduced the sentence by a month and a half so the activist and the main opponent of the Russian regime will serve a sentence of two and a half years in prison.
At this hearing, the assessment of Alexei Navalny’s appeal against the conversion into effective prison of the suspended sentence to which he had initially been sentenced was at issue.
On February 2, Russian justice sentenced Navalny, 44, to a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence for enforcing a suspended sentence in 2014, a trial considered arbitrary by the ECHR.
However, the sentence imposed that the ten months Navalny remained under house arrest be discounted, thus serving two years and eight months.
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