Representatives of nine foreign embassies, EU attend Navalny's hearings

Representatives of nine foreign embassies and one from the European Union arrived for the hearings of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny on Saturday in Moscow.

Representatives of nine foreign embassies and one from the European Union arrived for the hearings of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny on Saturday in Moscow. According to a report by Sputnik, Navalny is set to take part in two hearings: on complaints regarding the replacement of the suspended sentence in the 2012 Yves Rocher fraud case with a real jail term, and also on the veteran defamation case.

"Staffers of nine foreign embassies have arrived: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands, and also an EU representative," a court spokeswoman said. Meanwhile, 18 foreign media outlets were accredited to the hearings.

Earlier, a Moscow court had sent Navalny to prison for more than two-and-a-half years. CNN reported the verdict was announced after a heated hearing in which the Kremlin critic ridiculed claims he broke his parole conditions while in a coma and denounced Russia's leader as "Putin the prisoner."

The Putin critic was previously handed a three-and-a-half-year suspended sentence in the 2014 case along with five years of probation. He had to spend five months in Germany recovering from Novichok poisoning before his return to Moscow on January 17. (ANI)

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