By Associated Press - Wednesday, February 8, 2017

MOSCOW (AP) — A court in a provincial Russian city has found opposition leader Alexei Navalny guilty in the retrial of a 2013 fraud case, which means that he cannot run for president next year.

In a webcast hearing on Wednesday, Judge Alexei Vtyurin said Navalny was guilty of embezzling timber worth about $500,000. The previous guilty verdict was overturned by the European Court of Human Rights which ruled that Russia violated Navalny’s right to a fair trial.

The judge, presiding in in Kirov, a city nearly 800 kilometers (500 miles) east of Moscow, has yet to pronounce sentence.

Navalny, the driving force behind massive anti-government protests in 2011 and 2012, had announced plans to run for office in December and had begun to raise funds.

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