Why was Alexei Navalny released on bail?

LESS than 24 hours after Alexei Navalny (pictured with his wife), Russia’s leading opposition leader, was pronounced guilty, sentenced to five years in a prison camp and led away in handcuffs from the court room, he was returned to the same court-room and released from detention on bail, pending an appeal to the sentence. To make things even more bizarre, his release was requested by the same prosecutor who a day earlier demanded that he should be jailed. "I request that you verify the identity of Prosecutor Sergei Bogdanov," said Mr Navalny. "It's possible that it is not Prosecutor Bogdanov but his double. Because it was namely Prosecutor Bogdanov demanded that I be arrested in the courtroom." No Russian politician or lawyer could recall anything like this taking place ever before.

Few doubt that instructions to release Mr Navalny temporarily from police custody came from the Kremlin—just as the instructions to put him in jail earlier. The idea seems to be to give Mr Navalny a chance to participate in the Moscow mayoral elections on September 8th as the main opponent and a sparring partner to Sergei Sobyanin, the incumbent. Mr...Continue reading