Interfax: Navalny may be subject to planned amnesty – Human Rights Council head

Alexei Navalny file photo

(Interfax – October 16, 2013) Prominent opposition activist and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, whom the Kirov Regional Court gave a five-year suspended prison sentence on Wednesday for embezzlement of assets belonging to the state-run timber company Kirovles, may be subject to the amnesty that the State Duma is expected to announce soon, Russian Presidential Human Rights Council head Mikhail Fedotov said.

“Judging by the sentence, he has committed a nonviolent crime that did not entail grave and irreversible consequences, and so he may be subject to amnesty,” he said.

“Amnesty is a non-individualized act, and it is applied to categories of convicts rather than to individuals. But the crime of which Navalny and [Pyotr] Ofitserov have been found guilty falls into this category,” he said.

The Human Rights Council forwarded proposals to the president on Tuesday on a draft amnesty bill that the Duma is supposed to announce to mark the 20th anniversary of the constitution.

President Vladimir Putin earlier asked the Human Rights Council to draw up such proposals.

The Human Rights Council suggested earlier that the amnesty could be applied to the defendants and convicts in the case dealing with the events during an opposition rally on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow on May 6, 2012, the people figuring in the so-called Yukos case, and a large number of those convicted for nonviolent crimes that did not entail grave consequences.

[featured image is file photo]

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