Emmanuel Macron
French President Emmanuel Macron commented on the verdict of Alexei Navalny ( founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of organizations performing the functions of a foreign agent ) in the Yves Rocher case. He wrote about it on his Twitter page.
In the Russian-language recording, Macron called for Navalny's immediate release.
“Political disagreement is not, under any circumstances, a crime,” he wrote, adding that respect for human rights and democratic freedoms cannot be discussed.
Earlier, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign and Security Policy Josep Borrell called for the release of Navalny.
On Tuesday, February 2, the Simonovsky Court of Moscow replaced Alexei Navalny's suspended sentence with a real one. He was sentenced to 3.5 years in a general regime colony. However, Navalny will spend 2 years and 8 months in the colony, taking into account the year spent under house arrest during the preliminary investigation in the Yves Rocher case.
About 20 employees of the embassies of foreign states, including the USA, Bulgaria, Poland, Latvia, Austria, Switzerland, arrived at the court session.
Navalny was detained on January 17 at the Moscow Sheremetyevo airport upon his return from Germany. According to him, he was treated in Berlin for poisoning. Navalny fell into a coma on August 20, he became ill during the flight from Tomsk to Moscow. On August 22, he was taken to a German clinic, whose doctors announced that the Russian was poisoned with a substance from the Novichok group. Russian doctors found no traces of the poison.
