Russian opposition leader Navalny loses appeal against new 19-year jail term

Russian opposition leader, Alexey Navalny, lost his appeal against a 19-year prison term that was added to his existing sentence last month, a Moscow court judge has said.

The latest sentence was imposed on Aug. 4 after Navalny was convicted on six charges related to alleged extremist activity, all of which he denied.

His appeal was rejected on Tuesday by a Moscow judge after a hearing in which Navalny took part by video link. The proceedings were closed to the media apart from the reading of the verdict, despite protests from Navalny and his lawyers.

Navalny, wearing a black prison uniform, stood listening to the judge's decision.

The latest sentence was on top of eleven and a half years he was already serving at the IK-6 penal colony at Melekhovo, about 235 km (145 miles) east of Moscow, on fraud and other charges which he also rejected as politically motivated.

Daniel Kholodny, a TV technician who worked for Navalny, was sentenced to eight years in jail in August as part of the same trial. His appeal too was rejected on Tuesday.

Navalny, 47, is by far the best known figure in Russia's splintered opposition, with supporters casting him as a Nelson Mandela-style figure who will one day be freed from jail.

His political movement has been outlawed and its key figures have been jailed or fled abroad since Russia sent his troops into Ukraine last year.

The Kremlin has tried to portray Navalny as politically irrelevant, and Russian officials portray him as an extremist.

Navalny voluntarily returned to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he underwent treatment for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent in Siberia.

He was immediately arrested on arrival. The Kremlin denied it had tried to have him killed, with Russian President Vladimir Putin commenting: "If someone had wanted to poison him, they would have finished him off."