Europe's top human rights court has ordered Russia to release jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, a ruling quickly rejected on Wednesday by Russian authorities. The European Court of Human Rights order had demanded that Russia free Navalny immediately and warned that failing to do so would mark a breach of the European human rights convention. Russia's justice minister dismissed the court's demand as “unfounded and unlawful”. Navalny, who is President Vladimir Putin's most prominent critic, was arrested last month upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin.