Moscow:Prosecutors on Tuesday asked a Moscow court to fine jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on charges of defaming a World War II veteran, maintaining pressure on the top Kremlin foe.
Navalny, 44, an anti-corruption investigator and Putin’s most prominent critic, was arrested last month upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation.
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Earlier this month, a Moscow court sentenced Navalny to two years and eight months in prison for violating terms of his probation while recuperating in Germany. The sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Navalny has rejected as fabricated and the European Court of Human Rights has ruled to be unlawful.
During Tuesday’s hearings at Moscow’s Babushkinsky District Court, prosecutors asked the judge to order Navalny to pay a fine of 950,000 rubles (about $13,000) for slandering the 94-year-old veteran. Navalny, who called the veteran and other people featured in last year’s pro-Kremlin video “corrupt stooges,” “people without conscience” and “traitors,” rejected the slander charges and described them as part of the authorities’ efforts to disparage him.