Russian journalist is jailed for retweeting a JOKE about protests supporting Alexei Navalny
- Sergei Smirnov was jailed for 25 days by a Moscow court on Wednesday, he said
- He had retweeted a post showing the time and date of an unsanctioned protest
- It came a day after Navalny was sent to prison for 2.5 years in a separate case
A Russian journalist was jailed for 25 days on Wednesday for sharing a joking social media post about the Alexei Navalny protests.
Sergei Smirnov, the editor of independent outlet Mediazona, was found guilty of repeated violations of protest legislation, he said.
According to court documents, he was accused of organising an illegal protest on January 23 after retweeting a post that showed the time and date of the event.
Police detained him last week and Smirnov was jailed for 25 days by a Moscow court, he told his social media followers from inside the courtroom.
Journalist Sergei Smirnov (second left) during a hearing at a Moscow court on Wednesday where he was jailed for 25 days
After Smirnov’s sentencing on Wednesday, the Russian Journalists and Media Workers Union demanded his release.
The union described the court’s decision as ‘unlawful, absurd and shameful’.
Smirnov was sentenced a day after Navalny was told he would have to serve two years and eight months in jail in a separate case.
He was found guilty of flouting the terms of his suspended sentence for a 2014 fraud conviction, meaning the punishment was upgraded to real jail time.
But Navalny says the conviction was based on trumped-up charges and argued he could hardly have checked in with parole officers while recuperating in Germany from his nerve agent poisoning last year.
Smirnov was among those jailed over protests in support of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny (pictured), who was sent to prison for more than two and a half years on Tuesday
The decision to jail Navalny sparked further protests in which more than 1,400 people were detained, primarily in Moscow, according to a monitoring group.
Thousands have responded to Navalny’s call for demonstrations since the Kremlin critic was arrested on his return to Russia last month.
Navalny’s jailing has sparked a fresh wave of condemnation from the West, including calls for further sanctions on Moscow.
But Russia dismissed the criticism and accused Western governments of interfering in its own internal affairs.
Russia has not accepted the finding that Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, and denies involvement in a plot to assassinate him.
Navalny claimed in December to have duped an FSB security service agent into confessing details of the plot against him.