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WATCH: Protest art installation by Alexey Navalny set up in Paris

origin 1Replica of Alexey Navalny’s prison cell installed in Paris ©AP Photo

Supporters of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny have installed a replica of his prison cell in a square near the Louvre Museum in Paris to raise awareness of his plight.

According to the organizers of the event, visitors can venture inside the makeshift cell “to assess the conditions” in which President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic has been held.

Navalny, 46, has spent his career fighting official corruption. In 2020 he was poisoned with a nerve agent, which proved nearly fatal. He accuses the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin of being behind the incident.

After five months of convalescence in Germany, he returned to Russia and was immediately arrested.

He was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for a parole violation, and last year was sentenced to another nine-year sentence for fraud and contempt of court.

He is being held in a maximum security prison in the Vladimir region, east of Moscow.