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Russian court gives Navalny suspended term on appeal
AFP
October 16, 2013, 8:36 pm
Kirov (Russia) (AFP) - Russian protest leader Alexei Navalny on Wednesday avoided being sent to jail after a Russian court changed a five-year penal colony sentence against him in an embezzlement case into a suspended term.
The three judges hearing the appeal in the Kirov region of northern Russia left Navalny's conviction in place but said they had decided to "change the verdict for Alexei Navalny into a suspended term".
Navalny's co-accused in the controversial embezzlement case, his former business associate Pyotr Ofitserov, also had his original four year penal colony term transformed into a suspended sentence.
The verdicts were delivered after an extraordinarily rapid hearing by the standards of the Russian legal system that lasted barely two-and-a-half hours.
Navalny said he would nonetheless appeal the conviction, which risks disqualifying him from politics and ruining his growing political ambitions.
"Naturally, we will appeal," he told reporters in the courtroom.
Russian court declines to jail opposition leader Navalny
Reuters
October 16, 2013, 6:54 pm
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny (R) attends a court session in Kirov October 16, 2013. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
KIROV, Russia (Reuters) - Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's conviction for theft was upheld by an appeals court on Wednesday but his five-year jail sentence was suspended, allowing the prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin to walk free.
The conviction, however, will prevent Navalny, who emerged from a wave of street protests as the most prominent opposition leader, from seeking elected office for years. He said he would appeal.
Navalny was convicted in July of organising the theft of 16 million roubles ($500,000) from a timber firm in 2009. He had appealed the verdict and sentence, contending the case against him was fabricated and politically motivated.
"It's clear for me that the authorities are trying by all means to hound me out of politics, coming up with some restrictions and fabricated cases," he said after embracing his wife following the ruling in the provincial city of Kirov.
"One thing is for sure, they will not succeed in pushing me and my allies out of political life," said Navalny, who posted a strong second-place showing against a Putin ally in a Moscow mayoral election last month.
Jailing Navalny would have increased the risk of a new wave of opposition protests against Putin and done further damage to his image in the West as Russia prepares to host the 2014 Winter Olympics in February.
(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska, additional reporting by Maria Tsvetkova in Moscow; Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Douglas Busvine and Ralph Boulton)
