Russian court docket clears method to ship Navalny to a penal colony

The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, rejected that demand and known as the Strasbourg, France-based court docket’s ruling “a severe try and intervene in inside judicial issues of Russia.”

In his last argument in court docket on Saturday, Navalny quoted from the Bible, and stated that prosecutors, the decide and different authorities officers ought to cease mendacity as a result of ultimately the reality will triumph. He additionally instructed his followers to not really feel abandoned.

“Our system and our authorities is making an attempt to persuade people who they’re on their own,” he stated.

Requested on Saturday whether or not Navalny’s incarceration would make Russian political life too uniform, Peskov stated that “there may be sufficient pluralism on the Russian political scene” and that “the Kremlin has many opponents.”

Over the previous month, Navalny’s allies have organised two countrywide protests in his assist that drew tens of 1000’s to the streets. The police arrested 1000’s.

The poisoning, the sentencing and the crackdown on protesters all signalled a pivot by Putin to harder-line home insurance policies. Navalny has been jailed regularly earlier than, however just for transient stints in Moscow, and he has by no means been despatched to a penal colony.

Underneath Russia’s prison justice system, transferring an inmate to the penal colonies is a prolonged strategy of journey on a specialised prisoner practice wagon. It may possibly start at any level after a court docket rejects the primary enchantment of a sentencing, which occurred on Saturday.

The journey can take weeks, with stops at switch prisons, throughout which inmates are usually not allowed to contact attorneys or members of the family. Their vacation spot typically stays unknown till they arrive.

Navalny can petition the European Courtroom of Human Rights on grounds that its demand to launch him has gone unheeded. Though the court docket can’t legally compel Russia to abide by its ruling, the dispute may escalate to the Council of Europe. It may additionally doubtlessly result in Russia’s expulsion or withdrawal from that group.

It will be a big breach. Russia joined the Council in 1996, signalling an finish to the Chilly Warfare division of Europe on human rights points.

In a separate listening to Saturday, Navalny was sentenced to a high quality of $11,500 on a conviction of getting slandered a World Warfare II veteran. The defamation case has been seen as meant principally for publicity functions to tar Navalny as unpatriotic.

Professional-Kremlin information shops have coated the hearings extensively, casting Navalny as a power-hungry neo-Nazi able to defame a warfare veteran to additional his political profession.

In court docket, Navalny known as the case a “disgusting public relations course of.” He accused kin of the warfare veteran, Ignat Artyomenko, 95, of getting used their grandfather in a Kremlin-backed smear.