MOSCOW (AP) – A Moscow court on Tuesday sentenced Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to more than two and a half years in prison on charges of violating probation conditions while recovering in Germany after nervous breakdown.
Navalny, who is President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, had earlier denounced the procedure as a futile attempt by the Kremlin to scare millions of Russians into submission.
The prison sentence comes from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that he rejected as fabricated.
Navalny, 44, was arrested on January 17 on his return from a five-month convalescence in Germany in the attack, which the Kremlin blamed. Russian authorities deny any involvement. Despite tests by several European laboratories, Russian authorities said they had no evidence that he had been poisoned.
While the order was being read, Navalny showed his wife Yulia in the courtroom and drew the outline of a heart on the glass cage where he was being held.
Earlier, Navalny attributed his arrest to “fear and hatred” of Putin, saying the Russian leader would go down in history as a “poison.”
“I deeply offended him by surviving the assassination attempt he ordered,” he said.
“The purpose of this hearing is to scare a large number of people,” Navalny said. “You can’t shut down the whole country.”
Russia’s penitentiary service claims that Navalny violated the probation conditions of his suspended sentence from the 2014 money laundering conviction, which he rejected as politically motivated. He asked the Simonovsky District Court to turn his 3-and-a-half-year suspended sentence into one that he has to serve in prison, although he spent part of his sentence under house arrest.
Navalny pointed out that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that his 2014 conviction is illegal, and Russia has paid him compensation in accordance with the ruling.
Navalny and his lawyers argued that while he was recovering in Germany after the poisoning, he could not personally register with the Russian authorities, as required by probation. Navalny also insisted that his legal rights had been grossly violated during his arrest and described his imprisonment as a forgery of justice.
“I returned to Moscow after finishing treatment,” Navalny said at Tuesday’s hearing. “What else could I have done?”
Navalny’s prison has sparked massive protests across Russia over the past two weekends, with tens of thousands taking to the streets to demand his release and chant slogans against Putin. Police detained more than 5,750 people on Sunday, including more than 1,900 in Moscow, the largest number the nation has seen since Soviet times. Most were released after receiving a court summons and facing fines or imprisonment from seven to 15 days. Several people have faced criminal charges for alleged violence against police.
“I am fighting and I will continue, even if I am now in the hands of people who like to put chemical weapons everywhere and no one would give three kopecks for my life,” Navalny said.
Navalny’s team convened another demonstration in front of a Moscow court on Tuesday, but police were in place, surrounding nearby streets and making random arrests. More than 320 people have been detained, according to the OVD-Info group, which monitors arrests.
Some Navalny supporters still managed to get close to the building. A young woman climbed a large pile of snow along the court street and erected a poster that read “Freedom to Navalny.” Less than a minute later, a police officer picked her up.
In court, Navalny thanked the protesters for their courage and urged other Russians not to fear repression.
“Millions cannot be closed,” he said. “You stole people’s futures and now you’re trying to scare them. I urge everyone not to be afraid. ”
Following his arrest, Navalny’s team released a two-hour video on YouTube of an opulent Black Sea residence allegedly built for Putin. The video has been viewed more than 100 million times, fueling discontent as ordinary Russians struggle with an economic downturn, the coronavirus pandemic and widespread corruption during Putin’s years.
Putin insisted last week that neither he nor his relatives own any of the properties mentioned in the video, and his longtime confidant, construction mogul Arkady Rotenberg, claimed he owned them.
As part of efforts to quell the protests, authorities targeted Navalny associates and activists across the country. His brother Oleg, main ally Lyubov Sobol and a few others have been under house arrest for two months and face criminal charges of violating coronavirus restrictions.
Navalny’s imprisonment and repression of protests sparked international outrage, with Western officials demanding his release and condemning the arrests of protesters.
Visiting Moscow on Tuesday, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde, the current president of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, called on Russia to release Navalny and condemned the crackdown on protests.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who will visit Moscow later this week, criticized the detentions and disproportionate use of force against protesters, stressing that Russia must live up to its international human rights commitments.
Russia has rejected US and EU criticism as mixed in its internal affairs and said Navalny’s current situation is a procedural issue for the court, not a problem for the government.
More than a dozen Western diplomats attended the meeting, and Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said their presence was part of the West’s efforts to limit Russia, adding that it could be an attempt to exercise ” psychological pressure ”on the judge.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was ready for dialogue on Navalny, but strongly warned it would not heed Western criticism.
“We are ready to patiently explain everything, but we will not react to the mentor-type statements or take them into account,” Peskov said in a conference call with reporters.