A Russian court docket on Friday sentenced three legal professionals for the late opposition chief Aleksei A. Navalny to as a lot as 5 and a half years in jail for passing on correspondence from him to his allies, a transparent reminder of how the Kremlin continues to be pursuing his associates even after his loss of life.
The three legal professionals — Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Aleksei Liptser — have been arrested in October 2023 whereas Mr. Navalny was in a high-security jail colony in Siberia, in a stark warning that the Kremlin was intent on severing Mr. Navalny’s hyperlinks to the surface world.
The town court docket in Petushki, about 80 miles east of Moscow, convicted the three legal professionals, all of whom represented Mr. Navalny in some unspecified time in the future over the previous decade, of involvement in an extremist group, Russian information businesses reported from the courtroom.
Even from jail, Mr. Navalny was the most well-liked opposition determine in Russia, defiantly difficult the rule of President Vladimir V. Putin, and the authorities banned his nationwide motion as extremist shortly earlier than the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Mr. Kobzev was sentenced to 5 and a half years in jail, Mr. Liptser to 5 years and Igor Sergunin, the one one of many three to plead responsible, to a few and a half years.
Yulia Navalnaya, Mr. Navalny’s widow, in a assertion on Friday, known as the three legal professionals political prisoners and urged their launch. And Lyubov Sobol, considered one of Mr. Navalny’s longstanding allies, mentioned on X that the ruling was “dictated by the Kremlin and seeks to take revenge towards those that stayed by Navalny’s facet until the top.”
Prosecutors mentioned through the trial that the legal professionals “used their place” to go alongside Mr. Navalny’s correspondence from a jail colony in Petushki, the place he frolicked earlier than being transferred to Siberia, to his allies in Russia and overseas.
Of their ruling, the court docket agreed with their declare that doing so had allowed Mr. Navalny “to hold out his function because the chief and head of an extremist group.”
Two different legal professionals for Mr. Navalny, Olga Mikhailova and Alexandr Fedulov, have been charged in absentia as a result of they’d fled the nation. Their case has but to be heard.
Mr. Navalny was serving a 19-year jail sentence on a number of expenses when he died at a high-security jail colony in February final yr. The Russian authorities attributed his loss of life to a collection of illnesses aggravated by coronary heart arrhythmia, a conclusion that was strongly rejected by his household and allies, who blamed the Kremlin for his loss of life.
A few of the letters and jail diaries that the legal professionals helped to get out of the Petushki jail have been included in Mr. Navalny’s memoir, which was revealed posthumously late final yr.
Mr. Navalny’s legal professionals argued within the trial that they have been being prosecuted for routine authorized work, equivalent to liaising between a consumer and their household or associates.
Mr. Kobzev, who labored facet by facet with the opposition chief, instructed the court docket that “we’re being tried for transmitting Navalny’s ideas to different folks,” based on the Novaya Gazeta newspaper.
The three legal professionals had been positioned in a cage within the courtroom, and in the beginning of the listening to on Friday, supporters chanted “We’re happy with you! You’re Russia’s finest folks!” as they smiled to supporters and journalists, based on social media footage.
In an obvious try to dampen the present of help, the police on Friday morning detained 4 journalists and one supporter as they arrived by practice in Petushki. They have been launched with out being charged after the decision was introduced, based on Mediazona, an unbiased media outlet in Russia.
The prosecution of the legal professionals was consistent with the Kremlin’s try to isolate Mr. Navalny, who managed to stay an vital voice in Russian politics regardless of his incarceration, and his Anti-Corruption Basis.
Legal professionals who represented their three colleagues instructed reporters outdoors the court docket they weren’t intimidated by the prosecution. “Issues will be totally different however being a lawyer will not be about getting scared,” mentioned one, Denis Leisle, who represents Mr. Liptser, chatting with Mediazona.
Ivan Zhdanov, chairman of the Anti-Corruption Basis, mentioned the ruling would set a harmful precedent for the nation’s authorized system, as a result of folks may very well be held accountable for one thing as innocuous as passing alongside correspondence.
“Legal professionals already knew they have been being monitored throughout conferences with their purchasers,” he wrote on his Telegram channel. “Now they are going to know they have been being monitored, recorded and that this may very well be used towards them in court docket to convict them.”
