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Russian authorities have raided the homes of three of Alexei Navalny’s lawyers and detained them on extremism charges, a move that allies of the jailed opposition leader say is intended to further isolate him from the outside world. isolation.
Navalny’s team said on Friday that Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexey Liptzer were charged with being members of an extremist group, which carries a maximum sentence of six years in prison.
The charges came as Navalny, 47, was sentenced in August to 19 years in prison on extremism charges and will be transferred to a “special regime” prison, having already served 11 and a half years on another charge.
“This is an act of intimidation with the clear intention of strengthening Navalny’s relationship with the outside world,” Navalny’s chief of staff Leonid Volkov wrote on X (formerly Twitter) Quarantine.” “If his lawyers are locked up, they won’t be able to go there and visit him or even find out what happened to him. It’s terrible.”
Navalny is a charismatic anti-corruption activist who has cultivated an online following and poses the biggest challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s rule. Navalny was arrested on his return to Russia from Germany in 2021 after recovering from nerve agent poisoning.
Putin has denied Navalny’s accusations that he ordered his killing but acknowledged that a commando team from Russia’s main security service, the FSB, was tracking him when he was poisoned in Siberia in 2020.
The president has refused to name Navalny publicly and has repeatedly accused him, without evidence, of destroying Russia on behalf of the United States.
After Navalny’s arrest, Russia destroyed his base, arrested some of his supporters and prompted most of the rest to flee the country. His team currently works primarily in Lithuania.
Navalny described the prison conditions he endured as torture. Still, he sent a series of messages to supporters through his lawyers and frequently denounced Putin and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at court hearings.
“This is a perfect reflection not only of my trial, but also of the state of the rule of law in Russia,” Navalny told a hearing on Friday at his penal colony more than 200 kilometers east of Moscow, according to a statement posted by his supporters. Recorded, he went on to compare Putin’s regime to Soviet-era repression.
“Just like in the Soviet era, they not only hunted down political activists and turned them into political prisoners, but they also went after their lawyers.”
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