Watchdog

A Russian prosecutor called for a three-year prison sentence for a youth activist from the Tatarstan region who is on trial over a social-media post praising the killing of 49 people at a gay nightclub in Florida last year.

The prosecutor made the recommendation on January 31 at the trial of Ramil Ibragimov at a military court in the Volga River city of Samara.

The verdict and sentence are expected on February 1.

Ibragimov, the head of Tatarstan's Union of Young Leaders of Innovations, was charged with "public calls for terrorism and justifying terrorist activities" over a June 14 Instagram post that supported the killing of people it referred to as "fags."

In vulgar language, the post expressed regret that injured survivors of the attack "did not croak."

The post came two days after gunman Omar Mateen fatally shot 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Ibragimov acknowledges the post but pleaded not guilty.

"I do not by any means justify murder, which along with homosexuality is considered a grave sin in all religions," he told the court on January 31.

He said that what he did was "stupid and emotional."

MOSCOW -- Russian bailiffs are enforcing a court order requiring Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny to attend a hearing in his trial in the provincial city of Kirov.

Navalny spokesman Timur Korobitsyn told Interfax on January 31 that court bailiffs appeared at the office of Navalny's anticorruption group earlier in the day and took him away "to the airport."

Navalny wrote on Twitter the same day that bailiffs were taking him to their headquarters in Moscow even though he showed them a plane ticket to Kirov.

On January 30, the Kirov court ruled that Navalny and his co-defendant, Pyotr Ofitserov, must be compelled to appear after they stayed away from the last two hearings.

The next hearing at the court in Kirov, nearly 800 kilometers northeast of Moscow, is scheduled for February 1.

Russia's Supreme Court threw out the 2013 conviction of Navalny and Ofitserov on charges of large-scale theft involving timber sales and ordered the current retrial, which began in December.

Navalny, 40, was handed a five-year suspended sentence in the initial trial in the case, which he said was politically motivated punishment for his opposition activity.

Navalny was convicted of fraud in a separate case in 2014 and given a 3 1/2-year suspended sentence.

He has announced plans to run for president in 2018, but if he is convicted at the retrial he is likely to be barred from seeking political office.

With reporting by Interfax