Russia jails Putin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza for 25 years

Russia on Monday sentenced Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza to 25 years in a “strict regime” penal colony on treason and other charges for criticising the Ukraine offensive.

International leaders and supporters immediately condemned the verdict, the longest against an opposition figure in recent years, and called for his release.

A Moscow court found the 41-year-old guilty of treason, of spreading “false” information about the Russian army and of links to an “undesirable organisation” after a closed-door trial.

Kara-Murza appeared in a cage for defendants, wearing blue jeans, a black T-shirt and grey blazer, an AFP journlaist said.

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He smiled and gestured to his supporters to write to him in prison. 

“A quarter of a century is an ‘A+’ for your courage, consistency and honesty in your year-long work. I am infinitely proud of you, my love, and I’m always by your side,” his wife Evgenia Kara-Murza wrote on Twitter. 

“This is a terrible verdict, but it is a very high testament to Vladimir’s work,” his lawyer Maria Eismont said, adding that her client will appeal and “believes he has done sincere good for Russia”.

In his last words in court last week, Kara-Murza said he stood by his political statements, including against Russia’s offensive in Ukraine.

“I subscribe to every word that I have said, that I am incriminated for today,” Kara-Murza said in comments published by veteran journalist Alexei Venediktov. 

– ‘Dark turn’ –

“Not only do I not repent for any of it — I am proud of it,” he added.

Kara-Murza over the years pleaded in the United States and Europe for the adoption of individual sanctions against Russian officials, and contributed to the adoption of the Magnitsky act, a US bill intending to punish Russian officials responsible for the death of Russian tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow prison in 2009.

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The United States slammed Russia’s “escalating campaign of repression” while the British, Canadian and US ambassadors denounced the ruling in a statement outside the Moscow court.

“Today’s verdict is a sad testament to the dark turn this struggle (for democracy) has come to,” said Canadian ambassador Alison LeClaire. 

Britain and the UN urged for Kara-Murza’s immediate release.

Kara-Murza received British nationality after moving to the United Kingdom from Russia with his mother when he was 15.

“Kara-Murza was tried on charges that appear related to the legitimate exercise of his right to freedom of opinion, expression, and association,” UN human rights chief Volker Turk said.

The European Union denounced the “outrageously harsh court decision” while Germany deplored “the shocking level” of  repression.

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Kara-Murza was detained in April last year on charges of spreading what the authorities consider false information about the Russian army over an address to members of the lower house of the Arizona legislature last March.

In August 2022, Kara-Murza was accused of being affiliated with an “undesirable organisation” for participating in a conference in support of political prisoners.

– Kara-Murza poison –

In October, he was charged with treason over remarks critical of Moscow made at three public events abroad, his lawyer told the state-run TASS news agency.

Since launching the offensive in Ukraine in February last year, Russia has clamped down on critics.

Kara-Murza suffers from a nerve condition called polyneuropathy which his lawyers say was due to two poisoning attempts in 2015 and 2017. 

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The condition has worsened in prison, and he was too unwell to attend some of his hearings, his lawyers said.

Kara-Murza says he was poisoned twice because of his political activities but  continued to spend long periods in Russia.

The Western-educated journalist was a close associate of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was shot dead near the Kremlin in 2015, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch turned critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Almost all Putin’s major opponents have either fled the country or are in jail. 

Putin’s vocal domestic critic Alexei Navalny was arrested in January 2021 upon returning from Germany, where he was recovering from a poison attack that he blamed on the Kremlin.

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In December, opposition politician Ilya Yashin received eight-and-a-half years in prison for spreading “false” information about the Ukraine offensive.