Monday April 17, 2023, Vladimir Kara-Mourza was sentenced to 25 years in a penal colony by Russian justice after what can be described as a mock trial. This is the sentence demanded by the Russian prosecution for this notorious opponent, prosecuted for high treason, dissemination of false information about the Russian army and also for illegal work for an organization qualified as undesirable. Vladimir Kara-Mourza, who has already been poisoned twice in 2015 and 2017, assassination attempts which are attributed to Russian power, has faced Russian justice which has demonstrated for months, and even years, that the rule of law no longer exists in Russia.
(Rebroadcast April 16, 2023)
Since the beginning of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, few are those who still dare to defy taboos and shout loud and clear their rejection of an unjustified war. Vladimir Kara-Mourza is one of them. This 41-year-old opponent, father of three children, remained in Russia after the outbreak of the offensive, despite the risks that this implied, while his wife and children live in the United States.
Marie Mendras, political scientist at the CNRS and professor at Sciences Po Paris, explains why this former journalist wanted to continue to fight in his country despite the threats: “ As he says himself, he was fascinated by the political work carried out by Boris Nemtsov. Boris Nemtsov was Boris Yeltsin’s Deputy Prime Minister in the 1990s and as soon as Vladimir Putin came to power in 1999, Nemtsov was one of the few to understand that the era that was opening up would be a dangerous era for democracy and freedoms. And in February 2015, when Boris Nemtsov was assassinated, Kara-Murza decided to devote his whole life to fighting a regime that he already considered at that time to be a dictatorship and a criminal regime. »
The first opponent sentenced for high treason
Vladimir Kara-Mourza, who played a key role in the adoption in 2012 in the United States of the Magnitsky Act, is considered an enemy by the regime of Vladimir Putin. And after having criticized the Russian authorities and the army following the outbreak of the invasion in Ukraine, the Kremlin has apparently decided to go after him, as detailed by Gilles Favarel-Garrigues, director of research at the CNRS (and author of the book The Vertical of Fear: Orders and Allegiances in Russia under Putin): ” Vladimir Kara-Mourza is a scapegoat fabricated by power to accredit the idea that there is an alliance between external and internal enemies who want to destabilize the regime. He’s not the first to pay the price. But it is in any case with unprecedented severity that Vladimir Kara-Mourza will be sentenced. »
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The one who is sometimes nicknamed “opponent number 2”, after Alexeï Navalny, has been since April 17 the first opponent to be sentenced for high treason. The Russian prosecutor’s office sentenced him to 25 years in prison. And despite what this sentence implies, Vladimir Kara-Mourza does not budge and says he is proud of his commitment, which does not surprise Gilles Favarel-Garrigues: “ He is someone who has always faced the hardships he has undergone. He is someone who has been the subject of numerous persecutions and numerous legal proceedings in Russia, so I think that we are faced with opponents who have nothing more to lose. He is reminiscent, at this level, of Alexeï Navalny. It undergoes the dictatorship of the law as we say in Russia, at full speed. It is a choice that undoubtedly aims to also forge an image of determination in relation to Russian power. But we can only worry for these opponents and for the fact that they could end their lives in prison. »
A scary man in the Kremlin
The health of Vladimir Kara-Murza worries. And in a country with a regime that many describe as totalitarian, the one to whom the Council of Europe awarded the Vaclav-Havel Prize for Human Rights in 2022 could well suffer inhuman conditions of detention. Because as Marie Mendras explains, the authorities fear him: Why did Vladimir Putin and his intelligence services decide to reassure themselves that they can crush Vladimir Kara-Murza and let him die in a harsh regime camp? ? Well, it’s because this man scares them. »
Vladimir Kara-Murza, after a travesty of justice, was sentenced to 25 years in a penal colony. It is the longest sentence given since the end of the Soviet Union for political activity, a decision that drew widespread criticism around the world after what was described as a sham trial and a political trial.
Read alsoRussia: opponent Vladimir Kara-Murza sentenced to 25 years in prison