By Mark Trevelyan
Russian prosecutors have demanded jail phrases of almost six years every for 3 legal professionals who represented Alexei Navalny, an ally of the late opposition chief mentioned on Tuesday.
Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser are accused of collaborating in an extremist organisation. They had been arrested in October 2023 and added the next month to an official checklist of “terrorists and extremists”.
Navalny, who died abruptly in an Arctic penal colony in February, was himself convicted of extremism and different costs, all of which he denied. Prosecutors say the legal professionals handed data to and from Navalny whereas he was in jail.
Navalny’s ally Ivan Zhdanov posted on the Telegram messaging app that prosecutors had been searching for penal colony sentences of 5 years and 11 months for Kobzev, 5 years and 10 months for Liptser and 5 years and 6 months for Sergunin.
Navalny’s widow Yulia, in a YouTube video printed final week, described the three accused males as political prisoners.
“They haven’t dedicated any crimes,” she mentioned. “They’re in jail for merely doing their job, which any lawyer ought to do with any prisoner: making ready a defence technique, discussing problems with detention in jail, writing complaints, submitting lawsuits.”
The legal professionals’ trial has been performed behind closed doorways on the request of prosecutors, citing an unspecified safety menace if it had been held in public. The decision is predicted shortly.
The Kremlin says it doesn’t touch upon particular person courtroom instances, however authorities have solid Navalny and his supporters as Western-backed traitors searching for to destabilise Russia.
Yulia Navalnaya, who has taken up her husband’s mantle since his loss of life, says they’re combating for a free, democratic Russia with out President Vladimir Putin. She lives in international exile.
SECRET RECORDINGS
Human rights activists say the concentrating on of legal professionals who defend folks talking out in opposition to the authorities and the warfare in Ukraine crosses a brand new threshold within the repression of dissent below Putin.
Regardless of his imprisonment, Navalny was ready by way of his legal professionals to submit on social media and file frequent lawsuits over his therapy in jail, utilizing the ensuing authorized hearings as an opportunity to maintain talking out in opposition to the federal government and the warfare.
Navalnaya’s YouTube video included secretly recorded conferences between Navalny and the accused legal professionals in jail, one thing she mentioned was unlawful as a result of an accused particular person has the best to confer privately with a lawyer.
Russia’s federal jail service didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Navalnaya mentioned the recordings had been made by the authorities however handed to Navalny’s group after they supplied a reward for folks to return ahead with details about his loss of life.
Navalnaya has accused Putin of getting her husband killed, which the Kremlin denies. She has but to current proof.
Within the video, she mentioned she knew for sure that “the second of Alexei’s homicide” had been captured on a number of video cameras, and supplied to pay 10 million roubles ($97,500) to anybody who would hand over the footage.
Navalny’s household was notified in August that there have been no suspicious circumstances surrounding his loss of life. A letter from an investigator mentioned he had suffered from a “mixture of illnesses” and died because of a crucial enhance in blood strain that had upset the rhythm of his coronary heart.
Yulia Navalnaya mentioned her husband, who was 47 when he died, had by no means had coronary heart issues and rejected the official model as preposterous.
This text was produced by Reuters information company. It has not been edited by International South World.
