2023-04-17 11:38:22
Oppositionist and Russian journalist Vladimir Kara-Murzá, in pretrial detention for a year and charged with treason and two other criminal charges, was sentenced by a Russian court to 25 years of prison.
“Impose Kara-Murza a sentence of 25 years in prison to be served in a high security prison with subsequent restriction of freedom for one year and six months,” according to the ruling, read by Judge Sergei Podoprigorov.
The conviction of the prominent dissident generated a great expectation and gathered in the building of the Urban Court of Moscow about a hundred journalists and diplomats, as reported by the digital portal Mediazona.
In his last intervention, last week, Kara-Murza assured that he “does not regret anything” and that he “loves Russia”, according to his lawyer María Eismont.
Fine of 400,000 rubles
The court also imposed a fine of 400,000 rubles (about $5,000) to the opponent and prohibited him from practicing journalism for seven years.
Kará-Murzá, 41, was found guilty of high treason, a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison, dissemination of false information about the actions of the Russian Army in Ukraine and cooperation with an NGO declared undesirable by the Russian Justice.
The judge thus satisfied the demand from the Prosecutor’s Office that had requested 25 years in prison for Kara-Murzá. The defense has already announced that will appeal this sentence.
Several dozen independent journalists previously demanded the freedom of Kara-Murzá in a letter, in which they accuse the accusations as “unfounded” and “cynical”, and the judicial process opened against the opponent as political.
“Kara-Murzá is a true patriot who in the first days of the war already spoke out against the Russian aggression (…). But today in Russia advocating for peace and the cessation of war is a crime,” they said.
They denounced that the current process is a “clear example” of the return of Russia “to the Stalinist practices of political terror” and call on the authorities to try murderers and criminals, and not honest and responsible citizens.
Recently, the lawyers of the opponent, considered a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, reported that Kara-Murzá had been diagnosed in prison with polyneuropathy in the lower extremities as a result of the two poisonings he suffered in 2015 and 2017.
According to the Bellingcat investigative collective, he had previously been followed by the same unit of the Federal Security Service that lateror poisoned the opposition leader Alexéi Navalni, who in turn is serving eight years in prison.
In October 2022 he was distinguished with the Václav Havel Human Rights Award 2022 granted by the Council of Europe.
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