RUSSIA – Following the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Russia’s supreme court has overturned the conviction of anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny ordering “further investigation” and \u00a0ruled that Mr Navalny’s rights had been violated.<\/p>\n
The court ordered the case to be retried in Kirov, the provincial city where the 2013 hearings took place.\u00a0 Mr Navalny said the case should have been dismissed and that a retrial in Kirov would impede his political activities.<\/p>\n
He and an associate, Pyotr Ofitserov, had been sentenced to serve five and four years respectively. The sentences were later suspended.<\/p>\n
The court found Mr Navalny guilty of heading a group that embezzled timber worth 16m rubles ($500,000; \u00a3330,000) from the Kirovles state timber company while working as an adviser to Kirov’s governor, Nikita Belykh.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors had asked for a six-year jail sentence but judge Sergei Blinov decided on five years, saying there were no extenuating circumstances that would warrant keeping the Kremlin critic out of prison.<\/p>\n
The verdict had been widely condemned by the EU and the US, with opposition supporters clashing with police in Moscow, St Petersburg and other cities.<\/p>\n
In its February ruling, the ECHR found the trial had been based on “arbitrary interpretation of the law”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"