MOSCOW (Reuters) -A former campaign leader for jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was sentenced to seven years and six months in prison on Wednesday for “creating an extremist organisation”, rights group OVD-Info said.
Navalny supporters reacted with outrage to the sentence against Liliya Chanysheva, the former campaign chief for Navalny in the Urals city of Ufa.
Navalny aide Lyubov Sobol called it a political verdict, saying President Vladimir Putin had “put one more hostage in a penal colony”.
Navalny, Putin’s best-known opponent, is serving sentences totalling 11-1/2 years in a penal colony on fraud and other charges that he says were trumped up to silence him. He faces further “extremism” charges that could extend his term by decades.
Human rights groups and Western governments view Navalny as a political prisoner. The Kremlin denies that, routinely refusing to comment on his case and referring questions about him to the courts and the prison service.
(Reporting by Reuters, Writing by Mark Trevelyan; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
