A Moscow court has handed a suspended sentence to a participant of the January 23 rally to support opposition politician Aleksei Navalny after convicting him of attacking an officer and damaging a police car during the dispersal of demonstrators.
The Tver district court sentenced Gleb Borisov to a suspended sentence of five years on September 1.
Borisov is one of several persons who were handed prison terms or suspended sentences this year on charges of attacking police during nationwide demonstrations held on January 23 and January 31 to protest the arrest of the Kremlin critic.
Navalny was detained at a Moscow airport on January 17 upon his arrival from Germany, where he was recovering from a poison attack by what several European laboratories concluded was a military-grade chemical nerve agent in Siberia.
Navalny has insisted that his poisoning was ordered directly by President Vladimir Putin, which the Kremlin has denied.
In February, a Moscow court ruled that while recovering in Germany, Navalny had violated the terms of parole from an old embezzlement case that is widely considered as being politically motivated. Navalny's 3 1/2-year suspended sentence from the case was converted to a jail term, though the court said he will serve 2 1/2 years in prison given time already served.
More than 10,000 supporters of Navalny were detained across Russia during and after the January rallies. Many of the detained men and women were either fined or handed several-day jail terms At least 90 were charged with criminal misdeeds and several have been fired by their employers.
