MOSCOW - A Russian opposition activist was jailed for eight years for selling drugs on Tuesday, double the prison term requested by prosecutors in a case her husband said was revenge for the couple's criticism of the authorities.
A judge in the western city of Smolensk issued the sentence
against Taisiya Osipova following a retrial ordered after Dmitry
Medvedev, then president and now prime minister, said the
10-year term she was given last year was too severe.
Opposition figures said Tuesday’s decision was part of a
clampdown on dissent following Vladimir Putin’s return to the
presidency in May. Leftist opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov
called it “monstrous” in a Twitter post.
“The Osipova sentence is the nightmare that is enveloping
all of us,” tweeted Nikolai Polozov, a lawyer for the three
members of punk band Pussy Riot who were jailed for two years
this month over a protest against Putin in a Moscow church.
Osipova, 28, who has been in jail since her arrest in 2010,
maintained her innocence throughout the case, saying drugs were
planted on her.
She was one of several people on a list of what organisers
of a series of big opposition protests last winter said were
political prisoners.
The Smolensk regional court in February threw out the guilty
verdict from Osipova’s original trial in December and ordered a
retrial, saying the case against her had not been proven and
calling for further investigation. The decision came a month
after Medvedev’s comment, but there was no official connection.
Osipova and her supporters had hoped for an acquittal or
suspended sentence at retrial, and it was not clear why the
judge sentenced her to eight years when prosecutors had
requested four.
“The authorities are simply taking revenge on my wife,” Ekho
Moskvy radio quoted Osipova’s husband, Sergei Fomchenkov, as
saying. He said she would appeal.
Fomchenkov is a leader of opposition group Other Russia and
Osipova is an activist with the group.
Ekho Moskvy said the prosecution’s case was based on five
alleged instances incriminating Osipova and that the court had
refused to consider three of them, including one involving a
police search during which a witness testified that drugs were
planted.
The radio station said the guilty verdict at retrial was
based on testimony of witnesses whose identities were not
revealed by the court but who opposition leaders alleged were
pro-Kremlin activists.
Opposition activists say there has been crackdown on dissent
in the past few months, including new laws intended to restrict
their actions such as tighter control of the Internet and higher
potential fines for protesters.
They also say the two-year jail term for the Pussy Riot trio
for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” was
disproportionate and politically motivated.
The Kremlin denies any clampdown and says it did not
interfere in the Pussy Riot trial.
