A Russian court has increased the sentence handed down to a former employee of late Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny by two years to nine and a half years in prison.
On Tuesday, a court in the city of Ufa in the Urals upheld an appeal by the public prosecutor's office against the sentence for allegedly creating an "extremist organization" in June 2023 and increased the sentence for Lilia Chanysheva, Navalny's team announced.
Internationally, detained supporters of Navalny are considered political prisoners of the repressive Russian power apparatus.
The spokesman for Navalny's team, Kira Yarmysh, spoke of a "horror" ruling by an inhumane system. She had already criticized the first verdict as a "crime" of the arbitrary Russian justice system.
"A courageous, honest woman has been sentenced for fighting for Russia's future," Yarmysh wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Chanysheva had led the team of Navalny supporters in Ufa for four years, but reportedly stopped when the Russian judiciary classified the organization as "extremist" in 2021, effectively banning it.
According to the authorities, Navalny died on February 16 in the prison camp with the unofficial name Polar Wolf in the Siberian Arctic region of Yamal. The circumstances of his death have not been clarified.
The politician, weakened by a poison attack in 2020 and repeated solitary confinement in the camp, is said to have collapsed during a tour of the icy prison yard and died despite attempts at resuscitation.
According to Navalny's team, the death certificate mentions "natural" causes. Navalny's relatives speak of murder.