MOSCOW — A student at Moscow State University from Chechnya has been sentenced to five years in prison on a criminal charge of attacking police officers during January 23 rallies in support of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.
The Tver district court sentenced Said-Mukhammad Dzhumayev on August 19 after convicting him of punching several police officers during the dispersal of the demonstrators.
Video showing the incident involving Dzhumayev resisting police went viral in January and received significant online support by Internet users at the time.
Dzhumayev can be seen kicking and punching at riot police wielding truncheons as they surge forward toward a crowd of protesters.
Prosecutors sought six years in prison for the defendant.
Dzhumayev is one of several persons who were handed prison terms or suspended sentences this year for attacking police during the nationwide demonstrations held on January 23 and 31 to protest against the arrest of the Kremlin critic.
Navalny was detained at a Moscow airport on January 17 upon his arrival from Germany, where he was recovering from a poison attack by what several European laboratories concluded was a military-grade chemical nerve agent in Siberia a year ago.
Navalny has insisted that his poisoning was ordered directly by President Vladimir Putin, which the Kremlin has denied.
In February, a Moscow court ruled that while recovering in Germany, Navalny had violated the terms of parole from an old embezzlement case that is widely considered to be politically motivated.
His 3 1/2-year suspended sentence from the case was converted to a jail term, though the court said he will serve 2 1/2 years in prison given time already served.
More than 10,000 Navalny supporters were detained across Russia during and after the January rallies. Many of the detained men and women were either fined or handed several-day jail terms At least 90 were charged with criminal misdeeds and several have been fired by their employers.
