MOSCOW — A 77-year old Russian human-rights activist was sentenced Wednesday by a Moscow court to 25 days in jail for calling for an unauthorized protest, a ruling that has drawn strong criticism from rights groups.
Charges against Lev Ponomarev stemmed from a Facebook post in which he called for a protest in October in support of several teenagers accused of extremism in a case widely described as overblown.
Ponomarev was briefly detained when he attended October’s rally outside Moscow headquarters of the main domestic security agency. On Tuesday, Moscow’s Tverskoy Court handed him a 25-day sentence.