Russia court rejects appeal by jailed rights advocate Oleg Orlov
Al Jazeera
Co-chair of Nobel Prize-winning Memorial group says he has ‘no regrets’, compares Russian justice with Nazi Germany.
Oleg Orlov, a Russian human rights campaigner, has lost an appeal against his imprisonment for criticising the war in Ukraine.
A judge at the Moscow city court hearing on Thursday ruled that Orlov’s two and a half year sentence, handed down in February, should remain “unchanged”.
Orlov, the 71-year-old co-chair of the now-banned rights group Memorial, which was among the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, was convicted of discrediting the Russian army after he slammed the war in an article for French media, accusing President Vladimir Putin of leading the country into fascism.
Speaking via videolink from prison in the central city of Syzran, about 750km (470 miles) from the capital, Orlov told the packed courtroom that he had “no remorse or regrets”.
“I am in the right place at the right time,” he said.
