Navalny campaigner jailed for 7.5 years for 'extremism' by Russian court

MOSCOW (Reuters) -A former campaign leader for jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was sentenced to seven years and six months in prison on Wednesday for "creating an extremist organisation".

Navalny supporters reacted with outrage to the sentence against Liliya Chanysheva, the former campaign chief for Navalny in the Urals city of Ufa.

Navalny aide Lyubov Sobol called it a political verdict, saying President Vladimir Putin had "put one more hostage in a penal colony". Navalny's spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said Chanysheva had been punished for fighting for the future of her country.

"This sentence is a crime, and all those involved in fabricating this case will be punished sooner or later," Yarmysh wrote on Twitter.

Chanysheva has been in detention for the past year and a half. In her closing speech to the court last month, she said her case was part of a wider campaign by Putin to root out dissent in Russia.

"But Putin is corruption, low wages and pensions, a falling economy and rising prices. Putin is war! And this has already affected everyone!" she said.

The 41-year-old appealed to the judge not to sentence her to the 12 years requested by prosecutors.

"If you put me in jail for 12 years, I will not have time to give birth to a child. Give me a chance to be a mother," she said.

Navalny, Putin's best-known opponent, is serving sentences totalling 11-1/2 years in a penal colony on fraud and other charges that he says were trumped up to silence him. He faces further "extremism" charges that could extend his term by decades.

Human rights groups and Western governments view Navalny as a political prisoner.

The Kremlin denies that, routinely refusing to comment on his case and referring questions about him to the courts and the prison service.

(Reporting by Reuters, Writing by Mark Trevelyan; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)