Jailed Kremlin critic Navalny goes on trial on ‘extremism’ charges
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Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is currently serving a nine-year prison sentence on embezzlement charges.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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MOSCOW – Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny went on trial on Monday on “extremism” charges that could see his prison time extended for decades as part of wider government efforts to silence dissent in Russia.
The case comes more than a year into Russia’s full-scale offensive in Ukraine, which ushered in a new wave of legal proceedings against Moscow’s critics, with many now in exile or in jail.
An AFP journalist at the maximum security IK-6 penal colony, 250km east of Moscow, where the 47-year-old veteran opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin is being held, reported that proceedings were under way. The trial is taking place behind closed doors.
Navalny once mobilised massive anti-Kremlin protests but is now serving a nine-year prison sentence on embezzlement charges
He was arrested in 2021 on his arrival in Moscow from Germany, where he had been recovering from a poisoning attack that he blamed on the Kremlin.
Navalny, who has experienced major weight loss in prison, now faces up to another 30 years behind bars.
He said that prosecutors had provided him with 3,828 pages describing all the crimes he is alleged to have committed while in prison.
“Although it is clear from the size of the tomes that I am a sophisticated and persistent criminal, it is impossible to find out what exactly I am accused of,” he quipped.
He has been charged with financing extremist activity, publicly inciting extremist activities and “rehabilitating the Nazi ideology”, among other crimes.
This will be the first formally political case against him, his team said. “He is being tried for his political work,” Navalny spokesman Kira Yarmysh told AFP.
In April, Navalny said he was told he would be judged by a military tribunal over “terrorism” charges and could face life in prison.
Navalny’s team said he has been harassed in prison, where he is kept in a “punishment cell” for perceived transgressions.
He said prison officials forced him to share a cell with a sick, foul-smelling inmate and subjected him and other prisoners to “torture by Putin”, making them listen to the Kremlin chief’s speeches.
Despite his ordeal, the opposition leader, a lawyer by training, has sought to keep his spirits up in jail, fighting for his basic rights and taking prison officials to court.
He has also taunted his jailers, reporting that he has filed formal requests for a balalaika and a kimono and to be allowed to keep a kangaroo and a May bug in jail.
On his third birthday behind bars in early June, Navalny said he was “in a really good mood”.
“Of course I wish I didn’t have to wake up in this hellhole and instead have breakfast with my family, receive kisses on the cheek from my children, unwrap presents.”
Navalny has built a huge social media operation producing videos exposing corruption of the Russian elites close to President Putin.
He still communicates on social media through his team.
He had said in February that Russia’s defeat in Ukraine is inevitable and Moscow should pay for Ukraine’s losses once the fighting ends.
Navalny had set up a network of campaign offices across the country and aimed to run for president in 2018, but election authorities did not let him challenge Mr Putin.
The authorities designated Navalny’s offices “extremist” organisations
In mid-June, a Russian court sentenced the head of Navalny’s headquarters in the central city of Ufa to 7½ years in prison.
Thousands of Russians have been arrested for protesting against the conflict in Ukraine, and most high-profile activists who are still in Russia have been put behind bars. AFP
