A Moscow court on Monday sentenced Putin's opponent and critic,
Vladimir Kara-Murza,
to
25 years in prison
on various charges, including "high treason", in a context of repression in Russia against dissident voices in the midst of the conflict. in Ukraine.
Kara-Murza, close to the well-known opponent Boris Nemtsov assassinated in 2015, was one of the last critical voices against the Kremlin who was not in jail or exiled abroad.
After a closed-door trial, the court announced that it found Kara-Murza guilty of "high treason", spreading "false information" about the Russian military and illegal work for an "undesirable" organization.
Vladimir Kara-Murza during the trial.
Photo: AP
The 41-year-old leader, who has a
Russian and British passport,
was sentenced to a cumulative sentence of 25 years in prison in
a severe prison colony
, which implies stricter prison conditions, according to a request in this regard made by the prosecution.
The opponent, dressed in a black T-shirt and gray jacket,
smiled briefly as he heard the sentence
from the cell he was in in court, and gestured for his supporters to write to him.
The UN, Germany and the United Kingdom
criticized the sentence
and called for the "immediate release" of the opponent, who also has British nationality.
One of his lawyers, Maria Eismon, announced that Kara-Murza was going to appeal, denouncing "gross procedural violations" during the trial, Russian news agencies reported.
Kara-Murza will appeal, denouncing "gross procedural violations" during the trial, Photo: AP
In his last statements on April 10, the opponent said he felt "proud" of his political commitment.
"Not only do I not regret all that, but I am proud," he said, according to statements published by journalist Alexei Venediktov.
"I also know that there will come a day when the darkness that covers our country will dissipate... when those who instigated and provoked this war (in Ukraine) will be branded as criminals, and not those who tried to stop it," he added.
poisoned
In provisional detention since April 2022, Kara-Murza nearly
died after being poisoned
twice, in 2015 and 2017, according to him, by order of the Russian government.
One of his lawyers, Vadim Prokhorov, said that the opponent
suffers from polyneuropathy and neuromuscular pathologies
due to these two poisonings.
According to the Russian news agency TASS, Kara-Murza, who was declared
a "foreign agent"
by the authorities, was accused of "high treason" for having criticized the authorities in
public interventions in Western countries.
The opponent urged the United States, Europe and Canada to adopt sanctions against Russian officials for the serious human rights violations they committed.
Kara-Murza criticized the Russian regime in public interventions in Western countries.
Photo: Reuters
Kara-Murza, the 2022 winner
of the Council of Europe's Václav Havel human rights prize, also worked for former oligarch-in-exile and Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Open Russia organization, declared "undesirable" by Russian authorities in
2017
.
The accusation of disseminating "false information" about the army is based on
the law introduced after the start of the offensive against Ukraine
, which allows the suppression of any information that the authorities consider to be false.
Virtually all of Russia's opponents have been
sentenced to heavy sentences or have had to leave the country
in recent years.
The best known of them, anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, was jailed in early 2021 and sentenced to nine years in prison for fraud.
He was arrested on his return to Russia after suffering a poisoning that he attributed to the Kremlin.
His lawyer Vadim Kobzev expressed his concern in April about the situation of the 46-year-old opponent who, according to him, suffers from an "unknown illness" and is not receiving medical attention.
AFP
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