A Moscow court on Monday sentenced opponent Vladimir Kara-Mourza to 25 years in prison, a sentence of rare harshness that illustrates Russia’s relentless repression of those who criticize the offensive in Ukraine.
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The punishment for Mr Kara-Murza, who was one of the last major Kremlin critics not to be jailed or exiled abroad, is the harshest inflicted on an opponent in recent Russian history.
After a closed-door trial, the court announced it had found the opponent guilty of “high treason,” spreading “false information” about the Russian army and working illegally for an “undesirable” organization, according to an AFP journalist .
As a result, he was sentenced to a total of 25 years in a harsh-regime penal colony, which implies stricter prison conditions. Either what the prosecution had demanded.
Handcuffed in the cage reserved for the accused and dressed in blue jeans, a black T-shirt and a gray jacket, the 41-year-old Russian opponent, also a British citizen, greeted the verdict with a smile before gesturing his support demanded to write to him in prison.
It was “only political revenge” and “he is a political prisoner, there is no doubt about that,” commented his Washington attorney Vadim Prokhorov.
The imprisoned Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, for his part, described the verdict as “illegal, shameless, simply fascist”.
This condemnation has also sparked outrage in Western countries.
Washington castigated an “intensified campaign of repression” and a conviction with “political motives”, while the European Union, for its part, castigated a “scandalously harsh” verdict and “abuse of the judiciary”.
France was “dismayed”, Germany condemned with “the utmost determination” a verdict aimed at “preventing any critical voice”, while London and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for Mr Kara-Mourza’s immediate release.
Maria Eismont, one of his lawyers, announced Mr Kara-Mourza would appeal. “This is a terrible verdict, but it illustrates the great value of Vladimir’s actions,” she said, saying her client remained “brave” and “sincerely believed that he acted for the good of the community.” Russia”.
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His mother Elena, for her part, lamented a “brazen display of injustice” and “absurd”.
In his latest April 10 statements, broadcast by journalist Alexei Venediktov, Vladimir Kara-Mourza said he was “proud” of his political involvement.
“I also know that there will come a day when the darkness that covers our country will lift (…) when those who provoked and started this war (in Ukraine) will be labeled criminals and not those who tried to stop him,” he had said again.
Mr Kara-Mourza, who has been in custody since April 2022, nearly died after he says he was poisoned twice, in 2015 and 2017, in attacks he blames on Russian power.
According to Me Vadim Prokhorov, the opponent suffers from polyneuropathy and neuromuscular pathology, a consequence of the two intoxications. His supporters are concerned about his deteriorating health as a result of his imprisonment.
According to the Russian news agency TASS, Mr Kara-Mourza, who was declared a “foreign agent” by the authorities, was accused of “high treason” for criticizing power in public interventions in the West.
He has campaigned, particularly in the United States, Europe and Canada, for the passage of sanctions against Russian officials guilty of gross human rights abuses, such as the “Magnitsky Law” passed in 2012.
The opponent also worked for the Open Russia organization of ex-oligarch-in-exile and critic of the Kremlin Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was classified as “undesirable” by Russian authorities in 2017.
The accusation of spreading “false information” about the army stems from a change introduced after the start of the offensive against Ukraine, which allows information deemed false by the authorities to be suppressed.
In recent years, almost all Russian opponents have been sentenced to long prison terms or have had to flee their country.
The most prominent anti-corruption activist, Alexei Navalny, is serving a nine-year prison sentence for fraud, a case widely seen as political. He was arrested on his return to Russia in 2021 after recovering from poisoning he blames the Kremlin.