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| - A Russian court on Wednesday sentenced Sergei Smirnov, chief editor of Mediazona, an online news publication often critical of the government, to 25 days in jail over a re-tweet amid a growing crackdown on critics. Smirnov, 45, was found guilty of repeatedly violating legislation on public gatherings, his lawyer Fyodor Sirosh told AFP. Ahead of a January 23 protest in support of top opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Smirnov re-tweeted a joke that included the time of the protest rally. In the re-tweeted post, a Twitter user quipped that the editor looked like the leader of the punk group Tarakany (Cockroaches), Dmitry Spirin. Sirosh said Smirnov had been accused of urging Russians to protest. The journalist was detained on Saturday in front of his young son. Mediazona is an online publication which writes about abuses of prisoners' rights, among other subjects. Its publisher is anti-Kremlin activist Pyotr Verzilov. "This is the first arrest of an editor-in-chief of a media outlet in the history of Russia," Verzilov tweeted. "The Kremlin is not only trying to harshly crack down on protests but is also trying to intimidate journalists who are writing about what's happening." Verzilov said Smirnov did not even attend the January 23 rally. Russia's top independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta said it would for the next 25 days publish "key Mediazona articles" in a gesture of solidarity with the jailed editor. Over the past two weekends tens of thousands of Russians took to the streets across the country in support of opposition leader Navalny, President Vladimir Putin's most vocal critic. On Tuesday, the 44-year-old anti-corruption campaigner was given a jail term of two years and eight months for violating the terms of a 2014 suspended sentence on embezzlement charges he claims were a pretext to silence him. Protest monitors say that more than 10,000 people have been detained at the most recent pro-Navalny rallies. as/pvh
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