Navalny declared on Wednesday, in front of the court, that a new criminal file was opened in which he will be tried by a military court for “terrorism” charges.
He said it was related to a criminal case opened against him in October, on charges of creating an extremist group, inciting hatred against state officials and calling for unauthorized protests.
„They brought absurd charges against me, according to which I risk up to 35 years“said the Kremlin critic, who has been in prison since returning to Russia in January 2021 after recovering from a nerve agent attack in Siberia.
So far there has been no confirmation of a separate criminal case from the Russian authorities.
Navalnyi’s last court appearance was part of a pre-trial hearing related to the time the authorities are giving to familiarize themselves with the case files. He is due to appear in court again next week.
His current prison term ends in 2031, but if he is given the maximum sentence in all cases against him, he will remain behind bars beyond 2050, according to the investigative project Agentstvo, citing lawyers.
After his appearance on Wednesday, Navalnyi said he had returned to solitary confinement, having already spent 15 days there.
Meanwhile, another high-profile Russian dissident faces five years in prison in the city he has ruled for years. The Yekaterinburg Prosecutor’s Office claims that the former mayor Evgheni Roizman participated in a discussion on YouTube last August in which he negatively evaluated the way in which Russian troops are used in Ukraine.
In an interview with AFP last summer, Roizman said: “Something horrible is happening, evil prevails. Absolute vile evil suddenly prevails before our eyes. Until his arrest in August, the former mayor was one of the last prominent opposition politicians in Russia who had not been killed, detained or forced to leave the country.”
In interviews, he was often asked why he did not flee Russia, like many of his fellow activists. “I can’t run,” he said shortly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. “It’s unacceptable for me to do that.”
Earlier this week, in another demonstration of Russia’s crackdown on dissent over the invasion, an interior ministry worker was sentenced to seven years in prison for spreading “fake news” about the war in a personal phone call.
Sergey Klokov was detained a few weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in March 2022, when his phone was tapped. He reportedly told a friend over the phone: “We think we are fighting fascism, but there is no fascism there. Does not exist”.
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