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February 25, 2014

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Anti-Putin activists jailed over protests

Russian police detained hundreds of protesters yesterday outside a court that sentenced seven activists to prison terms of up to four years for demonstrations against Vladimir Putin’s third presidential inauguration.

The Moscow court sentenced the seven defendants to penal colony terms of between two and a half and four years for what judge Natalya Nikishina ruled to be “mass riots” during the 2012 demonstrations.

Several hundred supporters gathered outside the court shouting slogans as security forces and riot police ordered them to disperse.

More than 200 people were detained for “attempts to breach public order,” a Moscow police spokesman said. Some of those detained wore prison uniforms, while one wore a Putin mask.

An eighth defendant, the only woman in the case, was given a suspended sentence of three years and three months.

The eight defendants were found guilty on Friday of taking part in mass riots and attacking police ahead of Putin’s inauguration on May 6, 2012.

Most have been held in custody since 2012.

The court had postponed the sentencing in a move viewed by the opposition as an attempt to avoid publicity during Sunday’s closing ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.

Two members of protest punk band Pussy Riot who were released from prison in December, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, were among the defendants’ supporters.

Both were held, Alyokhina wrote on Twitter, posting a picture of them in a police van.

The case was opened after street clashes on Bolotnaya Square in central Moscow, when tens of thousands marched in protest at Putin’s return to the Kremlin.

Investigators said the opposition had planned to overthrow the government.

 


 

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