Alexei Navalny’s decision to return to Russia from Berlin, having survived a suspected assassination attempt by state security agents, was an act of extraordinary bravery. The Russian opposition leader and anticorruption campaigner was arrested on arrival at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on Sunday night. 

In a hastily convened court hearing, held in a police station, a judge ruled on Monday that Navalny would be kept in custody for 30 days for allegedly breaching the terms of a 2014 suspended sentence following a fraud conviction. The European court of human rights ruled that conviction to be politically motivated. It seems likely that the three-and-a-half-year sentence handed down will now be carried out...

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