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Detention of Navalny lawyers facing ‘extremism’ charges extended
Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Lipster and Igor Sergunin were arrested last year and charged with participating in an "extremist group".
A general view through an installation that reads ‘Happiness is not far away’ of the Kharp settlement, which houses the IK-3 penal colony, where Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny served his sentence and where he died, in Kharp, Yamal-Nenets Region, Russia, 18 February 2024. Russian opposition leader and outspoken Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has died aged 47 in a penal colony, the Federal Penitentiary Service of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District announced on 16 February 2024. A prison service statement said that Navalny ‘felt unwell’ after a walk on 16 February, and it was investigating the causes of his death. In late 2023 Navalny was transferred to an Arctic penal colony considered one of the harshest prisons. Picture: EPA-EFE/ANATOLY MALTSEV
A Moscow court on Tuesday extended the pre-trial detention of three lawyers facing “extremism” charges for passing messages between the outside world and Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny who died in prison.
Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Lipster and Igor Sergunin were arrested last year and charged with participating in an “extremist group”.
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Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most strident domestic opponent, died in an Arctic prison colony in February after over three years behind bars, much of it spent in solitary confinement.
A court ordered the trio to be held in pre-trial detention until at least August 3, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported from the courtroom.
“We are accused of passing information to Navalny. Navalny no longer needs it. He’s dead,” independent media outlets cited Kobzev as saying in court.
They had petitioned to be released on house arrest, pending trial.
They face six years in prison if convicted.
The Kremlin banned Navalny’s organisations as “extremist” as part of a sweeping crackdown on the opposition leader and his allies.
He was first arrested for parole violations on an earlier suspended sentence after he returned from Germany in early 2021.
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Navalny had been recovering there from a nerve agent poisoning that investigations by his team, Western and Russian media outlets have connected to Russian FSB agents.
Dozens of his top associates went into exile, and most of those who stayed have been arrested and sentenced to years behind bars.
The campaign against Navalny and his backers was widely seen as retribution for his political campaigning against the Kremlin and Putin personally.
© Agence France-Presse
