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Alexei Navalny placed under house arrest in Russia Alexei Navalny placed under house arrest in Russia
(35 minutes later)
A Moscow court has put the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny under house arrest, forbidding him from using the internet or receiving any visitors. A court in Moscow has ordered the Russian protest leader Alexei Navalny to be placed under house arrest, after a request from investigators in an embezzlement case.
Navalny is a prominent opposition figure and anti-corruption campaigner. He and his supporters published a damning report in January, documenting corruption in the preparations for the Sochi Winter Olympics. Navalny and his brother Oleg face charges of stealing and laundering a total of 51m rubles (£840,000) from the cosmetics company Yves Rocher and a Russian firm.
Navalny's associates wrote in his blog that a judge at the Basmanny court in Moscow on Friday granted a petition by prosecutors for Navalny's arrest for a fraud conviction. Investigators had already made Navalny sign a pledge not to leave Moscow but asked for his restrictions to be stepped up to house arrest, arguing that he had repeatedly violated the restrictions imposed on him.
In July last year, Navalny was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to five years in prison. A day later, however, he was released on a suspended sentence following mass street protests in Moscow. As well as being unable to leave his home in the Moscow region, the new restrictions imposed by a district court mean Navalny will only be able to talk to relatives, investigators and his defence lawyers.
Crucially for a figure who has emerged as one of the main challengers to President Vladimir Putin through a widely followed blog, he will not be able to use the internet. He will also not be able to send or receive letters or talk to the press.
The term of the house arrest is until 28 April but it can then be extended. "He will only be allowed to leave his home with the permission of investigators," his spokeswoman Anna Veduta wrote on Twitter.
Navalny was given a suspended five-year sentence last year in a separate embezzlement case. He and his supporters argue that like his previous conviction, the current case is a ruse by the Kremlin aimed at eliminating one of Putin's most dangerous opponents from politics.
Navalny is serving a week-long administrative detention sentence handed out this week for disobeying police orders at a demonstration over the jailing of a group of activists opposed to Putin. He is due to walk free from that term on 3 March but under the court ruling he will then immediately have to begin the period of house arrest.