84-year-old human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov was sentenced in absentia to 5.5 years in a penal colony

84-year-old human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov was sentenced in absentia to 5.5 years in a penal colony

Ponomaryov was found guilty of evading the duties of a "foreign agent" and organizing the activities of an "undesirable" organization.

Moscow's Khoroshyovsky District Court also barred the human rights activist from administering websites for nine years, reports Mediazona.

The grounds for the case over the "undesirable" organization were that, according to the prosecution, in November 2022 the human rights activist founded the Andrei Sakharov Institute in Paris. In July 2024, the organization was declared "undesirable," but despite this, Ponomaryov organized the distribution of the institute's materials, "aimed at fomenting protest sentiment and discrediting Russia's state authorities."

The case under the second charge was opened because of the refusal to use "foreign agent" labels in publications.

@meduzalive