Jailed Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny has been chosen as the winner of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, the European Parliament’s annual human rights prize, for his work to expose corruption and efforts to restrict freedoms in Russia.
Navalny was chosen by European lawmakers as the recipient of the award on October 20, the European People’s Party Group said, after being shortlisted along with a group of Afghan women and a jailed Bolivian opposition politician.
The announcement by the EPP, a center-right group of members from the European People’s Party, the largest party in the European Parliament, came shortly after two sources told RFE/RL of the decision.
Navalny, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critics, was jailed in January after returning to Russia from Germany, where he was treated for a poisoning he said was ordered by the Kremlin, a charge Moscow denies.
The EU has imposed sanctions on Russian officials over Navalny’s poisoning and imprisonment.
The 45-year-old was subsequently sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison on a parole violation charge that he denounces as politically motivated.
Last year, the prize was awarded to Belarus’s democratic opposition, which staged weeks of protests against Alyaksandr Lukashenka following a disputed presidential election that the strongman claimed to have won, but which the opposition and the West said was heavily rigged in his favor.
Other previous winners of the 50,000 euro ($59,000) award, named after Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, include South African president Nelson Mandela, Venezuela’s democratic opposition and Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai.
