Russia opposition leader Alexei Navalny sentenced to 2.5 years in penal colony

Navalny’s suspended sentence of 3.5 years has been transferred into a prison sentence, the court rules. The one year he already served under house arrest as part of the first trial will count against that time, meaning he will be imprisoned for a further 2.5 years.

Navalny, 44, was detained on January, 17 when he returned to Moscow from Berlin, where he had spent months recovering from a near-fatal poisoning attack in August he blames on President Vladimir Putin.