New legal ordeal for Alexei Navalny. At 47, the imprisoned opponent risks up to thirty years in prison in a new trial which opens Monday, June 19 and which will take place behind closed doors. “The court has decided to close the trial,” court spokesman Vadim Polejayev told reporters, adding that journalists in the building should leave the premises. Mr. Navalny, known for his anti-corruption investigations, is already serving a nine-year prison sentence for “fraud” – a conviction he considers political.
The Kremlin’s pet peeve, who narrowly survived a poisoning he blames on the Kremlin in 2020 and who has been imprisoned since January 2021, is notably accused of “extremism” and of having “rehabilitated Nazi ideology “. The opponent also said he was the target of a “terrorism” case for which he risks life in prison, but few details are known. At his side, appears the former technical director of his YouTube channel, Daniel Kholodny, accused of participating in and financing extremist activities.
The trial is being held in the super-high security IK-6 penal colony in Melekhovo, 250 kilometers east of Moscow. The contours of the prosecution are still unclear, Navalny’s defense having had only ten days to examine the 196 volumes of the file. “Although it is apparent, judging from the thickness of the volumes, that I am a methodical and diligent criminal, it is impossible to understand precisely what I am accused of,” Mr. Navalny recently commented wryly.
A particularly harsh treatment
The opponent accuses the Kremlin of wanting to keep him in prison for life to make him pay for his critics who have not weakened despite his imprisonment: through his team, Mr. Navalny continues to publish regularly on social networks to denounce in particular the offensive in Ukraine. Mr. Navalny “is on trial for his political activity,” said one of his spokespersons, Kira Iarmych.
According to his supporters, Mr. Navalny is subjected to particularly harsh treatment in prison, where he has lost weight and is placed in solitary confinement on the slightest pretext. In a message published in early June, the opponent indicated that he had been sent for the sixteenth time to a disciplinary cell, where the detainees are alone and in drastic living conditions.
Mr. Navalny also accuses the prison administration of harassing him, for example by giving him a fellow prisoner with a viral infection and giving off a foul odor, or by forcing prisoners to listen to speeches by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Wednesday, Lilia Chanycheva, one of his allies, was sentenced by the Kirovski Court in Ufa to seven and a half years in prison after being found guilty of creating an “extremist organization”.