Russian opposition member and journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza, in pretrial detention for a year and accused of treason and two other criminal charges, was sentenced today by a Russian court to 25 years in prison.
"Kara-Murza is sentenced to 25 years in prison to be served in a high-security prison with a subsequent restriction of freedom for one year and six months," according to the ruling, read by Judge Sergei Podoprigorov.
The conviction of the prominent dissident generated great expectation and brought together nearly a hundred journalists and diplomats at the Moscow Urban Court building, according to the Mediazona digital portal.
In his last intervention, last week, Kara-Murza assured that he "does not regret anything" and that he "loves Russia", according to his lawyer María Eismont.
The court also fined the opponent 400,000 rubles (about $5,000) and banned him from practicing journalism for seven years.
Kara-Murza, 41, was found guilty of high treason, a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison, dissemination of false information about the actions of the Russian Army in Ukraine and cooperation with an NGO declared undesirable by the Russian Justice.
The judge thus satisfied the demand of the Prosecutor's Office that had requested 25 years in prison for Kara-Murza. The defense has already announced that it will appeal this ruling.
Several dozen independent journalists previously demanded the release of Kara-Murza in a letter, in which they accused the accusations as "unfounded" and "cynical", and the judicial process opened against the opponent as political.
"Kara-Murza is a true patriot who in the first days of the war already spoke out against Russian aggression (...). But today in Russia, advocating for peace and the cessation of war is a crime", pointed out.
They denounced that the current process is a "clear example" of Russia's return "to the Stalinist practices of political terror" and called on the authorities to try murderers and criminals, and not honest and responsible citizens.
Recently, the opponent's lawyers, considered a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, reported that Kara-Murza had been diagnosed in prison with polyneuropathy in the lower extremities as a result of the two poisonings he suffered in 2015 and 2017.
According to the Bellingcat investigative collective, he had previously been followed by the same Federal Security Service unit that later poisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is himself serving eight years in prison.
In October 2022, he was honored with the 2022 Václav Havel Human Rights Prize awarded by the Council of Europe.
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