Court fines Navalny 20,000 rubles
MOSCOW. March 27 (Interfax) - The Moscow Tverskoi Court has ordered opposition activist Alexei Navalny to pay a fine in an amount of 20,000 rubles for organizing an unauthorized protest in the center of the capital, an Interfax correspondent reported on Monday.
"The court has ruled to find Navalny guilty and assign him a fine in an amount of 20,000 rubles," Judge Alesya Orekhova said in her decision.
"Navalny, being the organizer, made public calls on citizens to go to Tverskaya Street, creating obstacles to traffic and breaching public order in Moscow on March 26, 2017," the judge said, reading the administrative case materials.
Thus, the court found Navalny guilty of committing a violation under Part 1 of Article 20.2.2 of the Russian Code of Administrative Violations (organization of simultaneous mass stay and/or movement of citizens in public places, which is not a public event, making public calls for such actions, and also participation in them, if they led to violations of public order).
The opposition activist did not admit his guilt.
"I don't admit my guilt. People are unhappy about corruption and that was why they came to a peaceful protest," Navalny said in the Moscow Tverskoi Court on Monday.
The opposition activist said no alternative locations for the event had been offered by the Moscow government in the course of the three days preceding the rally.
"In accordance with a decision made by the Russian Constitutional Court, in the event of denial or if no alternative locations were proposed three days prior [to the rally], we were supposed to go to the initial place. The legal requirements were observed 100%," Navalny said.
Olga Mikhailova, a lawyer for Navalny, said the opposition activist should be released and the administrative case against him should be closed.
The court is expected to review another set of administrative materials on Navalny in a case involving resistance to the police in the near future.
According to earlier reports, Navalny was detained in Tverskaya Street in central Moscow on March 26 where an unauthorized protest against corruption was held on Sunday afternoon. According to the police, several hundred people were detained.