The appeal hearing of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, who is already in prison and was again sentenced in March to nine years in prison for "fraud", has been postponed until 24 May.
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About an hour after the start of the hearing, the Moscow City Court announced that the trial was postponed for a week at the request of Navalny, who was present via videoconference from Pokrov Prison No. 2, about 100 kilometers east of Moscow.
Responding to questions from the judge, the dissident, who has been jailed since January 2021, said he wanted to see the audio recording of the verdict against him in order to contrast it with the written version.
[/B] He also said that his family received permission to visit him on Friday and he does not want to miss that visit.
"They are going to send me to a high-security prison and this appointment is urgent," he said. "On May 24 you will be able to convict me and I will go to a maximum security prison," he scoffed."
Navalny is currently being held in a "regular" prison. But if the original verdict is upheld in the second instance, he will have to be transferred to a high-security prison where the conditions of detention are more severe.
Today he appeared in court via videoconference, locked in a cage and wearing a prisoner's uniform, according to images broadcast from the courtroom.
On March 22, the opposition figure, who is accused of embezzling millions of rubles from donations made to his anti-corruption organizations, was sentenced to nine years in prison for "fraud" and "insulting a judge" after a trial held in a conference room in Pokrov prison.
Alexei Navalny was arrested in January 2021 on his return from Berlin, where he had stayed for months to recover from a neurotoxic agent poisoning for which he holds Russian President Vladimir Putin responsible.
Source: APE-MPA
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