CNN
—
Three lawyers for Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin critic who died last year in an Arctic prison, have been found guilty by a Russian court of belonging to an extremist group and sentenced to several years in prison.
Igor Sergunin, Alexei Liptser and Vadim Kobzev were tried behind closed doors in Petushki, east of Moscow, and sentenced to three and a half, five and five and a half years respectively.
Prosecutors accused the lawyers of “using their status” to forward letters Navalny wrote during his time in prison to his associates, allowing him to continue leading an “extremist organization,” according to independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta .
Navalny died suddenly in February last year while serving a 19-year prison sentence for extremism charges he denied. Russia’s prison service said Navalny had “felt unwell after a walk” and the Kremlin denied any involvement in his death, but many Western countries and Navalny allies blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Human rights groups say the sentencing of Navalny’s associates shows the Kremlin continues to suppress opposition to Putin’s rule and his war in Ukraine.
“By targeting lawyers simply for doing their job, Russian authorities are dismantling what remains of the right to legal defense and abusing what is only a criminal justice system in name,” said Amnesty International in a press release.
The group said the sentence was “a shameful attempt to silence those who dared to defend Navalny” and called for the unconditional release of the lawyers.
The lawyers were first arrested in October 2023 for participation in an “extremist organization,” which Amnesty said was an “arbitrary designation” that the Kremlin applied to Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation.
They join a string of Russians associated with Navalny who have been pursued by prosecutors since the opposition leader’s death. Last April, two Russian journalists, Konstantin Gabov and Sergey Karelin, were accused of producing content for Navalny’s YouTube channel, which posts videos investigating corruption in the Kremlin that have garnered millions of views.
Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s widow, said Friday that the lawyers are “political prisoners” who “must be released immediately.”
Navalny, Putin’s most formidable opponent, was jailed upon his return to Russia in 2021. He arrived from Germany, where he had been treated after being poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent. A joint investigation by CNN and the Bellingcat group implicated the Russian Security Service (FSB) in Navalny’s poisoning.
Navalny died just over a month before Putin was re-elected president in March last year.
