Alexei Navalny, a well-known Russian opposition leader, was arrested on March 26 at a demonstration protesting the alleged corruption of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. The next day, the Tverskoy Court fined him 20,000 rubles ($350) for organizing the protest and sentenced him to 15 days in jail for resisting police orders. Protests against Medvedev took place in many other Russian cities on the 26th, including St. Petersburg. Police estimate between 7,000 and 8,000 people attended the Moscow protest. Moscow law enforcement officials reported that 500 individuals had been detained, but the human rights group OVD Info estimates twice that number.

This is not the first time Navalny has trouble with the Russian legal system. In February he was convicted and sentenced for embezzlement. That same month, the European Court of Human Rights ordered Russia to pay more than €63,000 for arresting Navalny multiple times between March 2012 and February 2014. In May a Moscow court declined authorities' request to convert Navalny's suspended sentence into a prison term. He had been convicted of fraud and sentenced to three-and-a-half-years suspended sentence. In 2015 Navalny was handed a 15-day prison sentence for distributing leaflets attempting to publicize an "anti-crisis" demonstration. In 2014 Navalny and his brother, Oleg Navalny, were charged with embezzling approximately 30 million rubles ($518,000) from French cosmetics company, Yves Rocher Vostok, and the Multidisciplinary Processing Company by a fraud scheme between 2008 and 2012. (Jurist, March 27)

A Russian court on June 13 sentenced opposition leader Aleksei Navalny to 30 days for staging unsanctioned rallies at which an estimated 1,150 anti-corruption protesters were detained. The judge at the Simonovsky district court ruled that Navalny, who was detained outside his home in an outlying Moscow neighborhood on June 12 before the rallies started, repeatedly violated the law against unauthorized public gatherings. (RFE/RL)

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled (PDF) Oct. 17 that the conviction of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny for fraud and money laundering was arbitrary and unfair, and granted damages. The court also found (PDF) that Navalny's brother, Oleg Navalyy, was also unfairly and arbitrarily convicted for the same offenses. (Jurist)

Russians angered by the impending inauguration of Vladimir Putin to a new term as president protested May 5 in scores of cities across the country—and police responded by reportedly arresting nearly 1,600 of them.

Among those arrested was protest organizer Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption campaigner who is Putin's most prominent foe. Police seized Navalny by the arms and legs and carried the thrashing activist from Moscow's Pushkin Square, where thousands were gathered for an unauthorized protest. (AP)