Alexei Navalny: Russian court jails Kremlin critic for 30 days

A Russian court has sentenced Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to 30 days in prison, pending a trial, a speedy judgment following an unprecedented, ad-hoc one day hearing which seemed to ignore most aspects of law and process.

The hearing, in a police station, started earlier on Monday, less than 24 hours after Mr Navalny had been arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on his return to Russia since surviving a nerve agent attack in August.

It took a little over an hour for Judge Yelena Morozova to retire and consider her sentence against Mr Navalny.

When Ms Morozova returned, state prosecutors got the holding, 30-day custodial sentence they asked for. That was never in doubt. Over 99 per cent of trials in Russia end in guilty verdicts, and the stakes riding on this one meant the margin for error was even tighter.