Former journalist and Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a court in Moscow after he was found guilty of treason and denigrating the military.
This is the harshest sentence of its kind since the Russians last year passed a law that criminalises any criticism of the armed forces and the country’s decision to go to war against Ukraine.
According to a DW report, Kara-Murza raised the opposition slogan “Russia will be free” in court after the sentence was announced. It added that after the trial, the court said it found the 41-year-old guilty of spreading misinformation about the military and of being affiliated with an “undesirable organisation”.
Soon after the verdict, the United Kingdom, in a statement, condemned the “politically-motivated conviction” and said it had summoned the Russian Ambassador to “make clear that the UK considers Mr Kara-Murza’s conviction to be contrary to Russia’s international obligations on human rights, including the right to a fair trial.”
Who is Kara-Murza?
Born in 1981 in Moscow, Kara-Murza is the son of a famous Russian television host, Vladimir Alexeyevich Kara-Murza, who was known to be an outspoken critic of the former Soviet Union leader Leonid Brezhnev. Like his father, Kara-Murza also became a journalist at the age of 16 and finished his bachelor’s and master’s at Cambridge University.
In the following years, he went on to work as the London correspondent for various Russian news outlets, produced documentaries, wrote books and published blogs. He also became involved in Russian politics and between 2000 and 2003 served as an advisor to opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated near the Kremlin in 2015.
However, Kara-Murza is best known for his fierce criticism of President Vladimir Putin. He participated in numerous protests over the years against the leader across Russia. Many believe that it was because of his uncompromising voice against Putin that Kara-Murza was allegedly poisoned twice.
In 2015, he nearly died and suffered sudden kidney failure after an alleged poisoning attempt. Two years later, he fell into a coma after another suspected poisoning attempt.