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Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny sentenced to more than two years in prison

The ruling comes two days after 4000 protestors including Navalny’s wife was detained

alexei-navalny-instagram Screen grab of Alexei Navalny's video released on Instagram

A Moscow court on Tuesday sentenced Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to two years and eight months in a prison colony. The ruling triggered fierce condemnation from the West and calls for his immediate release.

Navalny, a lawyer and an activist, was detained on January 17 by policemen upon his return to Russia, five months after he was poisoned using a nerve agent. The ruling comes two days after 4,000 protestors including Navalny’s wife Yulia Navalnaya was detained by the police. The protesters were demanding Navalny’s release.

Putin’s crackdown on Navalny and his supporters intensified after the latter, with the help of his supporters, released a video of Putin’s luxurious palace by the Black Sea. The video was released on January 22.

Navalny led street protests in 2011 after the presidential election, and said the process was a fraud. He was, in 2013, convicted of embezzlement after being accused of stealing nearly $500,000 from a state-controlled timber company. Navalny, at the time, was also an unpaid advisor to the governor of the Kirov region east of Moscow, The New York Times reported. He was sentenced to three years and six months. The current sentence is the remainder of his 2014 sentence. The time Navalany spent in house arrest after the 2014 conviction was taken into consideration and therefore the original sentence of three years and six months has been reduced to two years and eight months. Navalny’s lawyers plan to appeal the ruling.

Britain, France, Germany, the United States and the European Union have denounced the ruling. The case is presenting one of the most serious challenges to the Kremlin in years, and it would be the first time that Navalny would serve a lengthy prison term.

Several hundred of his supporters marched through the streets, and police in riot gear detained at least 15 people at a central square near the Kremlin, an AFP report noted.

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