MOSCOW: Russia’s most prominent opposition leader Alexei Navalny called on Monday for his supporters to take to the streets after a hastily organised court ordered him jailed for 30 days.
The makeshift court — set up in police station on the outskirts of Moscow where Navalny was being held — agreed to a request from prosecutors for Navalny to be kept in custody until February 15.
Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s best-known domestic critic, was taken to the station after a dramatic airport arrest on Sunday that prompted condemnation from the West and calls for his immediate release.
In a video released by his team shortly after the ruling, the 44-year-old anti-corruption campaigner urged his supporters to protest.
“Do not be silent. Resist. Take to the streets — not for me, but for you,” Navalny said. The head of Navalny’s regional network Leonid Volkov said preparations were underway for protests to be organised across the country on Saturday. Navalny was arrested as he returned to Russia from Germany for the first time since he was poisoned with a nerve agent in August and flown to Berlin in an induced coma. Russia’s FSIN prison service said that it had detained him for violating the terms of a suspended sentence he was given in 2014, on fraud charges he says were politically motivated.
In another video posted by his team from the courtroom before the ruling, Navalny said he did not understand how the session could be taking place. “I’ve seen a lot of mockery of justice, but the old man in the bunker (Putin) is so afraid that they have blatantly torn up and thrown away” Russia’s criminal code, Navalny said.
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