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Olag Navalny (archive)
Photo: Evgeniy Sofiychuk / dpa
The brother of the imprisoned Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny has been sentenced in absentia to a prison camp in Russia.
The court in Moscow announced on Friday that Oleg Navalny's one-year suspended sentence had been converted into a real prison sentence for violating the conditions of probation.
According to the state agency TASS, the prison system assumes that the 38-year-old did not return to Russia after a flight to Cyprus last September.
Almost all of Alexei Navalny's key allies have fled into exile in Russia since his imprisonment.
In January, the state financial regulator listed Navalny and some of his associates as terrorists and extremists.
Oleg Navalny was sentenced to a one-year suspended sentence last year, together with prominent colleagues of his brother Alexei, because of the protests in support of the opposition, because he is said to have violated corona regulations.
At the time, the opposition spoke of arbitrary judgments.
In January, he was put on the wanted list.
Alexei and Oleg Navalny were convicted in 2014 in a fraud trial that critics of the Kremlin believe was politically motivated.
Oleg then served a three and a half year sentence and was released in 2018, while Alexei received a three and a half year suspended sentence.
Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny is imprisoned in a penal camp about 100 kilometers east of Moscow.
He is currently facing up to 15 years in prison in a new trial.
This time, Navalny has to answer for alleged misappropriation of funds for his anti-corruption foundation, which has since been banned, and for insulting a judge.
At the start of the new trial against him, Navalny accused the Russian judiciary of arbitrary staging of criminal proceedings.
mfh/dpa
