In wake of 77-year-old human rights icon’s December jail sentence, his third nonprofit faces fines for failure to register as ‘foreign agent’

Moscow’s Meshchansky Court has assigned a fine of 300,000 rubles (almost $4,600) to “In Defense of Prisoners’ Rights,” a nonprofit run by the human rights activist Lev Ponomarev. The court accused the foundation of failing to enter its identifying information in the Russian government’s registry of so-called foreign agents.

In April, two other organizations led by Ponomarev, “For Human Rights” and “Hotline,” refused to register as foreign agents and received 300,000-ruble fines as well. The three organization were named foreign agents following an “unplanned document check” that closely followed Ponomarev’s December 5, 2018, arrest for a social media post in support of a group of protesters.