Russian justice on Friday sentenced three lawyers of opponent Alexeï Navalny, who died in detention almost a year ago, to prison terms for charges of extremism, a new example of the ongoing repression in Russia .
Russian authorities are engaged in a campaign to suppress Vladimir Putin's critics, particularly those close to Navalny and those denouncing Russia's assault on Ukraine.
The lawyers Alexeï Liptser, sentenced to 5 years of detention, Igor Sergunin, sentenced to 3 and a half years, and Vadim Kobzev, sentenced to 5 and a half years, were arrested in October 2023, when the number one opponent of the Russian president was still alive.
They were accused of participation in the deceased's organization, classified as “extremist” by Russia.
“We are being tried for having transmitted Navalny's thoughts to other people,” lawyer Vadim Kobzev told the court at the end of December, quoted by Novaya Gazeta.
Justice accuses them of having transmitted to Alexeï Navalny, imprisoned in Russia from January 2021 until his death in prison on February 16, 2024, information allegedly allowing him to “plan, prepare (…) and commit extremist crimes” from his cell, according to investigators.
The trial has been taking place since mid-September before a court in Petushki, in the Vladimir region, east of Moscow, where one of the prisons where Alexei Navalny was once incarcerated is also located.
After the start of the first hearing, all the debates took place behind closed doors, as is generally the case in this type of case.
According to a court press release, Igor Sergunin pleaded guilty, unlike the two other lawyers.
During the hearing on Friday, Alexei Liptser greeted someone with a wave of the hand and a small smile from the white-barred cage reserved for the accused. The others remained silent and concentrated, according to AFP journalists present.
– “Political prisoners –
According to a defense lawyer, Roman Karpinski, the case was based on wiretapping of Mr. Navalny's detention meetings with his lawyers, which according to him constitutes a “violation of professional secrecy” of the prison administration, which transmitted these recordings to investigators.
Russian opponent in exile Yulia Navalnaïa, widow of Alexeï Navalny, affirmed on X that these lawyers were “political prisoners and (should) be released immediately”.
-The NGO Amnesty International criticized a “shameful attempt to silence those who dared to defend Alexeï Navalny”.
The Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, Caspar Veldkamp, denounced a “further deterioration in the already disastrous human rights situation” in Russia.
– “Resist” –
Since the start of the assault on Ukraine in February 2022, repression has hit all dissident voices in Russia.
Opponent lawyers were once rarely imprisoned, although subject to increasing surveillance and threats. But over the past three years, several of them have fled their countries to escape arrest, like two other Navalny defenders, Olga Mikhailova and Alexander Fedulov.
Charismatic anti-corruption and anti-Kremlin activist, Alexeï Navalny was arrested in Moscow in January 2021 upon his return from Germany, where he was hospitalized after a poisoning which he blamed on the Kremlin, which has always denied.
He was then sentenced to several sentences, including 19 years in prison in August 2023 for “extremism”.
Navalny communicated on social networks mainly via messages sent to his lawyers, in which he notably denounced the offensive in Ukraine and called on the Russians to “resist”.
His organization, the Anti-Corruption Fund (FBK), has been classified as “extremist” in Russia since 2021. The circumstances of his death in an Arctic penal colony remain unclear.
Last week, Yulia Navalnaya said that Russia refused to remove her late husband from the list of terrorists and extremists.
“Putin is doing this to scare you. He wants you to be afraid to even mention Alexei,” she said.
Many of his former collaborators, refugees abroad, now work with his widow, who has taken over from her husband without succeeding in uniting a divided and scattered opposition abroad.
