MOSCOW — A Russian court on Saturday rejected an appeal by the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, clearing the way for his probable transfer to the country’s penal colony process.
The ruling was anticipated. Russian officials had signaled considering that ahead of Mr. Navalny returned from Germany, exactly where he was becoming taken care of for a close to-lethal poisoning with a nerve agent final 12 months, that his homecoming would land him in a prison.
Below Russia’s criminal justice process, transferring an inmate to the penal colonies is a lengthy approach of travel on a specialized prisoner train wagon. It can get started at any level soon after a court rejects the to start with appeal of a sentencing, which took place on Saturday.
The journey can get weeks, with stops at transfer prisons, in the course of which inmates are normally not permitted to make contact with attorneys or relatives members. Their location in some cases stays unknown until eventually they arrive.
The ruling was the final probable appeal ahead of his prospective transfer to a penal colony, but it stays unclear when Mr. Navalny would depart from Moscow. He could be held in a large-protection prison in the capital to seem in court for other pending legal issues.
The ruling upheld Mr. Navalny’s sentence of much more than two many years in prison and set Russia on a collision program with Western nations, which could impose added sanctions on Moscow. The European Court of Human Rights has demanded that Russia release Mr. Navalny.
He is Russia’s highest-profile prisoner considering that the incarceration a decade in the past of the former oil magnate Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, also in a politically hued situation.
In excess of the previous month, Mr. Navalny’s allies have organized two countrywide protests in his help that drew tens of 1000’s to the streets. The police arrested 1000’s.
The sentencing and poisoning, which Mr. Navalny and Western governments blamed on the Kremlin, have been witnessed as a pivot to a tougher line in President Vladimir V. Putin’s domestic policies. Mr. Navalny had been jailed commonly ahead of, but only for short stints in the capital. He has never ever served a sentence in a penal colony.
In his last argument, Mr. Navalny quoted from the Bible, saying that reality would triumph. He also informed his followers not to really feel deserted.
“Our government is making an attempt to persuade men and women that they are all alone,” Mr. Navalny mentioned.
Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting.