Alexei Navalny sentenced to 3.5 years in general regime penal colony

In the evening of February 2, 2021, the Simonovsky Court of Moscow replaced the suspended sentence of Alexei Navalny (the founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of organizations performing the functions of a foreign agent) with a jail term of 3.5 years.

The court has thus upheld the proposition from the Federal Penal Service (FSIN) of Russia, which revealed a number of violations that Alexei Navalny committed while serving his suspended sentence.

Alexei Navalny will spend the next 3.5 years of his life in a general regime penal colony.

Earlier, the prosecutor requested Navalny be taken into custody and sent to a general regime penal colony. The state prosecutor also named Navalny the only Russian citizen who received a suspended sentence twice.

On Tuesday, February 2, a hearing was held at the Moscow City Court to lift the suspended sentence from Navalny on the Yves Rocher case and replace it with a real jail term. The Federal Penal Service requested Alexei Navalny be sentenced to 3.5 years in prison. Navalny was charged with 60 counts of public order violation when serving a suspended sentence.

As many as 20 employees of foreign embassies, including the USA, Bulgaria, Poland, Latvia, Austria, Switzerland, attended the hearing.

Alexei Navalny was detained on January 17 at the Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport upon his return from Germany. According to him, he was treated in Berlin for poisoning. Navalny lapsed into a coma on August 20 after he became ill on a domestic flight from Tomsk to Moscow. On August 22, he was taken to a German clinic, where it was subsequently announced that Navalny was poisoned with a chemical agent of the Novichok family. Russian doctors found no traces of poison in Navalny's samples.