Kremlin critic, Alexei Navalny, on Saturday, lost his appeal against what he said was a politically motivated decision to jail him for nearly three years.
A Moscow court did however shorten his original jail term by six weeks. The original term was 3.5 years but the amount of time he has already spent under house arrest taken into account, it was shortened to around two years and eight months.
Navalny was jailed on 2 February for allegedly violating parole, charges he has dismissed as politically motivated.
He was accused of breaking the terms of a 2014 suspended sentence for embezzlement that required him to report regularly to Russian police.
He has blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the attack and says the charges against him are fabricated.
The Kremlin denies any involvement in his poisoning.
Navalny spent a month in a Berlin hospital, two weeks of his stay in an induced coma.
In court, in a speech that referenced both the Bible and the Harry Potter book series, he argued the charges were absurd as he was unable to report to the police while recovering from the attack.
“The whole world knew where I was,” he said. “Once I’d recovered, I bought a plane ticket and came home.”
The judge rejected his case, though he did cut six weeks off the nearly three-year sentence imposed on Navalny. The Kremlin critic will return to the penal colony where he is serving his time.
Hours later, he was convicted in the same court of slandering a World War Two veteran and fined the equivalent of $11,500.
The veteran had appeared in a video supporting constitutional reforms, approved last year, which would allow Mr Putin to stand for election for two further terms.
The European Court of Human Rights, of which Russia is a member, said Navalny should be released out of concern for his life. But Russia said the call was “unlawful”.
Navalny’s supporters see the charges as an attempt to silence him and thwart his political ambitions.
He has been a persistent thorn in the side of President Putin, making allegations of corruption including a claim the president owns a lavish palace by the Black Sea.
Navalny’s allies are seeking to challenge pro-Kremlin parties in parliamentary elections this year, and President Putin warned on Thursday against foreign interference.
The Kremlin was dismissive on Saturday, its spokesman Dmitry Peskov telling reporters Navalny’s political future was “absolutely none of our business”.
All citizens have “the right to elect and be elected”, he said, “all citizens who are somehow not affected in their rights in accordance with our Russian laws”.
BBC/Reuters
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