Three legal professionals for deceased Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny have been on Friday sentenced to jail for “being a part of an extremist group,” a Russian court docket dominated.
Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Liptser and Igor Sergunin, who’ve been in pre-trial detention since October 2023, are accused of passing Navalny’s jail messages to the surface world.
The court docket stated that allowed Navalny — who died within the Arctic Polar Wolf jail colony in February 2024 — to proceed his function because the “chief of the extremist group.”
Navalny, due to associates exterior, was capable of publish on social media and file lawsuits over his therapy in jail. His letters partly served as a foundation for the memoir “Patriots,” which was launched late final yr.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has stepped up a home crackdown on dissent since launching his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Kobzev was sentenced to 5 and a half years in jail, Liptser to 5 years and Sergunin to a few and a half years. All three have been banned from training legislation for 3 years after serving their sentences.
“Vadim, Alexei and Igor are political prisoners and ought to be launched instantly,” Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Navalny, wrote in a publish on X.
Kobzev’s lawyer Andrei Grivtsov referred to as the sentence “merciless,” and stated his shopper was a brave man who “stays a really dignified lawyer.”
Navalny, who was thought of Putin’s most important opponent, died on the age of 47 within the penal colony. Russian authorities attributed his dying to pure causes, however media stories have claimed that Navalny confirmed indicators of poisoning earlier than his dying.
Amnesty Worldwide condemned Friday’s jail sentences and referred to as them a “a shameful try to silence those that dared to defend Alexei Navalny and make his voice heard even from behind bars.”
