A Moscow court sentenced two young Russians accused of having worked for the “extremist” organization of opponent Alexeï Navalny, who died in prison in mid-February, to three and a half years in prison, Russian media reported on Thursday.
According to the Mediazona website, which specializes in covering political repression, Alina Olekhnovich, 22, and Ivan Trofimov, 23, were arrested in July 2023 and then placed in pre-trial detention at the beginning of August while awaiting their trial.
The verdict was rendered on Wednesday according to a notice on the website of the Khoroshiovski court in Moscow consulted by AFP.
The two suspects were being prosecuted for
“participation in an extremist organization”
, a crime punishable by six years of imprisonment.
The accusation accused them, according to Mediazona, of being linked to illegal cells of Alexeï Navalny's organization, declared
“extremist”
in Russia in 2021 and banned.
Activists remaining in Russia
After this ban, most of the collaborators of the main opponent of Vladimir Putin left the country to avoid prosecution.
Several activists nevertheless remained and were sentenced to heavy sentences.
According to the NGO Memorial, Alina Olekhnovitch and Ivan Trofimov were, before their arrest, art students in an entity attached to the Moscow School of Advanced Economic Studies, one of the most renowned universities in the country.
In October 2022, a few days after the announcement of a partial military mobilization in Russia to fight in Ukraine, Navalny's team claimed to resume activities in the country, ensuring that it would protect the anonymity of those contributing to it. .
Alexei Navalny himself decided to return to Moscow in January 2021, five months after narrowly surviving a poisoning.
He was immediately arrested, sentenced to increasingly harsh sentences, in increasingly difficult conditions, before dying on February 16 in an Arctic prison.