On February 2, 2021, Moscow’s Simonovsky District Court, sitting at the Moscow City Court, converted Alexei Navalny’s suspended sentence in the Yves Rocher case into a prison term. The formal basis for the decision was a claim by the Federal Penitentiary Service that Navalny had violated the conditions of his suspended sentence, even though he was in Germany at the time recovering from the Novichok poisoning.
The court sentenced him to three and a half years in prison, with time previously spent under house arrest counted toward the term. For Navalny and his supporters, the decision reflected the authorities’ determination to imprison him after his return to Russia. The Kremlin feared his political influence and sought to remove him from public life by depriving him of his freedom..
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