Appeal hearing on Alexey Navalny’s prison sentence set for February 20
The Moscow City Court has set a date for opposition politician Alexey Navalny’s appeal against the Simonovsky District Court’s decision to imprison him for allegedly violating the terms of probation in the Yves Rocher case.
The appeal hearing will begin at 10:00 a.m. Moscow time, on Saturday, February 20.
Moscow Simonovsky Court revoked Navalny’s probation and sentenced him to 3.5 years in prison during a trial in Moscow on February 2. Pending the appellate ruling, Navalny will spend the next two years and eight months in prison due to time previously served under house arrest.
The court case came after Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service filed a complaint against Navalny for allegedly violating his parole while in Germany, where he spent nearly five months recovering after a near-lethal poisoning attack in August 2020. The defense maintained that the politician reported his whereabouts to the prison authorities. Navalny was arrested at a Moscow airport immediately upon returning from Berlin on January 17.
For more on Navalny’s case
- Fighting the ‘crooks and thieves’: Alexey Navalny’s anti-corruption politics
- How navalny became Navalny The photos that capture 17 years of activism, investigations, campaigning, and zeal
- ‘This is the road to dictatorship’ Here’s what some of Russia’s top experts expect in the aftermath of Alexey Navalny’s imprisonment
The Yves Rocher case
In 2014, Alexey Navalny and his brother Oleg were found guilty of embezzlement and laundering funds stolen from two Russian companies associated with the French cosmetics brand “Yves Rocher.” Oleg Navalny was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison and Alexey Navalny was given a 3.5-year probation sentence. The brothers pleaded not guilty, calling the case politically motivated. In 2017, the European Court of Human Rights declared the verdicts “unjust” and ordered the Russian authorities to pay the Navalny brothers compensation. Their sentences were never overturned, however.