By Mark Trevelyan
(Reuters) – A Russian court on Thursday rejected an appeal by dissident Alexei Gorinov against a three-year prison sentence for “justifying terrorism”, a human rights group said.
The sentence was meted out to Gorinov last November on top of a seven-year term he was already serving after being convicted in 2022 of spreading “deliberately false information” about the Russian army and its actions in Ukraine.
The charge of “justifying terrorism” – which he denied – was based on conversations with other prisoners that Gorinov’s defence lawyers said had been secretly recorded. They said the other inmates had tried to provoke him into making political comments.
Gorinov, 63, is one of the most prominent remaining jailed critics of Russia’s government and the war in Ukraine following a big East-West prisoner swap in August 2024 that saw the release of others including politician Vladimir Kara-Murza and human rights activist Oleg Orlov. Last month he was placed on an official register of “terrorists and extremists”.
Rights group OVD-Info said his appeal was rejected by a panel of judges at a hearing on Thursday in which he took part by video link from a prison in the city of Vladimir. It said he complained several times about the poor quality of the connection, saying he could not hear the proceedings.
Russian and Western rights groups have tracked Gorinov’s case with particular concern, given his age and precarious health. He has a history of lung problems, and supporters say he has at times been deprived of blankets, warm clothes and heating.
But despite his conditions and the length of his sentence, he has shown humour and resilience.
In a message posted via supporters last month, Gorinov described an epic bureaucratic battle with prison authorities to win the return of a piece of cutlery that had been confiscated from him.
The prison staff, he said, were subject to “some kind of complex about plastic spoons which could only be explained by a psychoanalyst of the calibre of the illustrious Sigmund Freud”.
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
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