Russian justice must deliver its verdict on Friday following the trial of three lawyers of opponent Alexeï Navalny, who died in detention in February 2024, who are in turn accused “extremism” and risk several years in prison.
Alexei Liptser, Igor Sergunin and Vadim Kobzev were arrested in October 2023, when Vladimir Putin’s number one opponent was still alive, and then placed on the list of “extremists”.
They are accused of having transmitted to Alexeï Navalny, imprisoned in Russia from January 2021 until his death in prison on February 16, 2024 in murky circumstances, information allowing him to “plan, prepare (…) and commit extremist crimes” from his cell, according to investigators.
These accusations of“extremism” are punishable in Russia by six years of detention, the prosecution having requested sentences of more than five years.
The trial has been taking place since mid-September before a court in Petushki, in the Vladimir region, east of Moscow, where there is also a prison where Alexei Navalny was once incarcerated.
After the start of the first hearing on September 12, all the debates took place behind closed doors, at the request of the prosecutor, despite protests from defense lawyers.
The hearing scheduled for Friday is scheduled to begin at 10:00 a.m. local time (07:00 GMT).
Stifled dissenting voices
A photo of deceased Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny displayed in a church in Berlin, Germany, June 4, 2024 / RALF HIRSCHBERGER / AFP
During the proceedings, Igor Sergunin pleaded guilty, according to the independent Russian media Mediazona. Alexei Liptser and Vadim Kobzev would not have done it.
The NGO Amnesty International, for its part, urged Moscow to put an end to “arbitrary prosecutions” brought against the lawyers.
Since the start of the assault on Ukraine in February 2022, repression has hit all dissident voices in Russia.
-Lawyers for opposition activists were once rarely imprisoned, although subject to increasing surveillance and threats. Over the past three years, several of them have had to leave the country to avoid being incarcerated.
Two other former lawyers of Alexeï Navalny are abroad and are subject to an arrest warrant.
One of them, Olga Mikhailova, described “savages” the sentences requested by the prosecutors, assuring on Instagram that the three lawyers on trial had “defended Navalny honestly and professionally for many years”.
Charismatic anti-corruption activist, Alexeï Navalny was arrested in Moscow in January 2021 upon his return from Germany, where he was hospitalized after being the victim of a poisoning in Siberia which he blamed on the Kremlin, which has always denied it.
He was then sentenced to several heavy sentences, including 19 years in prison in August 2023 for “extremism”.
Navalny communicated mainly from his prison 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), is also classified “extremist” in Russia since 2021.
The circumstances of his death in an Arctic penal colony in February 2024 remain unclear.
Many of his former collaborators, refugees abroad, now work with his widow, Yulia Navalnaïa, who took up the torch of her husband’s movement in exile, without however succeeding in uniting around her a divided and scattered opposition. the foreigner.
