Brussels – The European Union is sanctioning all the key people responsible for the death of Alexei Navalny, the opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin and recipient of the Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought. The EU Council decided to blacklist the names of Andrey Suvorov and Kirill Nikiforov. The former is the judge who sentenced Navalny to 19 years in prison in a special regime colony; the latter is the judge who rejected Navalny’s appeal for having been transferred to a punishment cell. Also affected by sanctions are Evgenia Nikolaeva and Natalia Dudar, judges who “have issued several sentences against political opponents including Navalny, thus contributing to political repression in Russia,” the council explains. For these four people, a ban on entry, travel, and stay in the territory of the EU is triggered, as well as the freezing of movable and immovable property and bank accounts possibly held in Europe. Included on the EU blacklist as entities are also the prison colonies IK-6 and IK-3, where Navalny was held.
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