Navalny ally & ex-Ekaterinburg mayor Roizman given 9 days behind bars for tweets encouraging attendance of unsanctioned protests
Evgeny Roizman, the former mayor of Ekaterinburg, has been jailed for nine days after being found guilty of encouraging his followers to take part in an unsanctioned march in support of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny.
Roizman, who served as mayor of Russia’s fourth-biggest city for five years, was given the short prison sentence after the prosecution successfully argued that he had used his Twitter account to publish the time and location of a protest that took place on January 31. As well as nine days behind bars, he was also handed 30 hours of compulsory labor.
Ekaterinburg’s former first citizen was also found guilty of organizing a protest on April 21.
“I don’t see any logic in this decision,” Roizman said after being sentenced. “It contradicts common sense and the materials of the case.”
This is not the first time Roizman has been in trouble with the law for protest-related activity. Earlier this year, he was fined 40,000 rubles ($540) for his participation in the same January 31 march, and a previous one a week earlier, on January 23.
Roizman was elected mayor of Ekaterinburg in 2013, as a member of the liberal opposition faction, Civil Platform. He resigned from the post in 2018, when local lawmakers voted to abolish direct mayoral elections.
Supporters of Navalny arranged the January demonstrations in cities all around the country, to protest against his detention after his return from receiving medical treatment in Germany, following an alleged poisoning. He was arrested at passport control in Moscow, and was in jail awaiting trial during the January protests. He is currently in prison, serving a two-year-and-eight-month jail term for breaking the conditions of a suspended sentence handed to him in 2014, when he was found guilty of embezzling 30 million rubles ($400,000) from two companies including the French cosmetics brand, Yves Rocher.
Three months later, on April 21, unauthorized marches were held to demand medical care for Navalny, who was on hunger strike to demand a doctor of his own choosing. After the demonstration, Navalny announced that he had been examined by civilian doctors the day before the protests.
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