Putin's regime sentences Alexei Navalny to 19 years in a special-regime penal colony

In Russia, the Moscow City Court, sitting in a closed hearing at the Vladimir maximum security penal colony, has sentenced politician Alexei Navalny to 19 years in prison, and this time the politician is to be sent to a special-regime penal colony.

Source: Russian service of the BBC

Details: It is noted that the judicial proceedings in the "extremist" case were classified. They began on 19 June and lasted only a month, with all sessions held behind closed doors.

On 20 July, the prosecutor requested another 20 years of imprisonment in the special-regime colony for Navalny, who is already serving a nine-year term for fraud in colony No. 6 in Vladimir Oblast. The term was requested by way of a cumulative sentence in conjunction with the previous punishment.

Special-regime penal colonies are institutions with the strictest conditions of imprisonment. According to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, men sentenced to life imprisonment are sent there, or in the case of a "particularly dangerous relapse of crimes" – in Navalny’s case, the prosecution relied on this second paragraph.

Navalny was accused of "extremism" under seven articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, the most serious of which was on the creation of an extremist organisation. In this case the Russian authorities consider Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Fund (FBK, recognised as extremist and banned in Russia) to be an "extremist organisation".

In addition, the opposition leader was accused of calling for acts of extremism, participating in extremist activities, creating an NGO that encroaches on the rights of citizens, financing extremism, attracting teenagers to commit dangerous acts and rehabilitating Nazism.

For Navalny, this is his third sentenced term in the last few years. After the court replaced the politician’s suspended sentence in the Yves Rocher case with a real one, he was transferred to general regime colony No. 2 in the city of Pokrov in Vladimir Oblast.

In June 2022, after the verdict on "fraud involving donations" and contempt of court came into force, with Navalny being sentenced to nine years, the opposition leader was sent to a maximum security colony in the village of Melekhovo in Vladimir Oblast.

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