Russian opposition leader <PERSON> calls for continued resistance after receiving 9-year sentence · Global Voices
Screen Shot from BBC's YouTube channel showing <PERSON>'s trial inside a prison.
While global public attention is mostly focused on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, other events taking place in Russia go almost unnoticed, including the Moscow trial of <PERSON>, the country's most prominent opposition leader.
<PERSON> returned to Russia on January 17, 2021 from his stay in a German hospital recovering from an attempt to poison him. On that day, he was arrested right inside Moscow airport on charges of violating the terms of his probation in a previous embezzlement case, and taken into custody.
After a hasty court hearing, he was sentenced to 3 years in prison and sent to a prison in the Vladimir region, not far from Moscow. Given his popularity in Russia after he unearthed massive corruption and targeted President <PERSON> , it became obvious that the story would not end with this verdict, and that the Russian authorities would try to find another reason to keep him imprisoned longer.
A year after his arrest, on January 25, 2022, the Federal Financial Monitoring Service of the Russian Federation (Rosfinmonitoring) included <PERSON> on the list of extremists and terrorists. Right after this, a new case was submitted to the Lefortovo Court of Moscow against <PERSON>. This time, he was accused of contempt of court and fraud . He was charged with the latter because he allegedly insulted a judge who had sentenced him in a previous trial in 2021.
To understand how far-fetched this accusation is, it is worth looking closer at the list of alleged insults : “Your Honor, you are breaking the law,” “My God.” The harshest words uttered by <PERSON> during the meeting were “disgusting”(омерзительный), “vile”(гнусный), and “go nuts” (офигеть), and they weren't even addressed to the judge.
As for the second part of the accusation regarding fraud, it relates, according to the prosecution, to the collection of money for <PERSON>'s flagship project Anti-Corruption Fund (FBK, a non-profit organization that investigates, discloses and prevents corruption in the highest authorities) that was allegedly spent for “personal needs and for extremist purposes.”
The reality is that about 300,000 people voluntarily donated their funds to the investigations of the FBK organization, of whom only four felt deceived and filed a lawsuit . An investigation by members of FBK reported that two of those were fake victims, and the other two were entrepreneurs investigated in unrelated criminal cases, and might have been pressured by security forces to act as they did to help with their own cases, as is often the practice in Russia.
Special measures for a special trial
<PERSON>'s trial was conducted in unusual circumstances: Instead of bringing the defendant to court for hearings, the court itself moved several times to the prison located in a small town in the Vladimir region. According to <PERSON>'s lawyer , this is an unusual decision and a rather rare case in judicial practice. Nevertheless, the authorities did not announce why they decided to hold the hearing in a prison instead of transporting <PERSON> to Moscow. 880
Journalists were allowed to watch the trial from a separate room through a TV screen, yet the transmission was frequently interrupted for alleged technical reasons. Though the hearing was formally declared open to anyone, that fact that that it took place inside a prison made it decidedly not. Everything was done to keep the trial as underreported as possible and kept away from the public eye.
One possible explanation for such measures is that, as expected, <PERSON> used the opportunity of the trial to express his views on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. An Instagram video of one of the hearings shows him saying: “ I am against this war. I consider it immoral, fratricidal and criminal. It was started by the Kremlin gang to make it easier for them to steal. They kill for the sake of stealing. … I am against this war.”
Through his social media accounts, <PERSON> also called on Russian citizens to protest to express their disagreement with the actions of the Russian authorities. He concluded by saying: “ If prison time is the price for my human right to say what I consider necessary and the civil right to fight for a better future for Russia, then they can ask for 113 [years]. I will not give up my words and what I did. 600