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Russia will imprison lawyers defending opposition leader Alexei Navalny
Reuters Three lawyers stand behind bars in a courtroom in the city of Petushki, Vladimir region, Russia, January 17, 2025 Reuters
Igor Sergunin, Alexei Liptser and Vadim Kobzev were sentenced to five and a half years in prison.
Three lawyers who defended Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny have been sentenced to five and a half years in prison for participating in an "extremist organization."
Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser were arrested in October 2023 after Russian authorities stepped up pressure on the jailed Kremlin critic, who died suddenly last February in an Arctic penal colony.
They were tried behind closed doors in Petushki, a town east of Moscow, and were accused of "using their status" to pass messages between Navalny and his colleagues.
Navalny denounced the case, calling it similar to that of the Soviet era and a sign of "the rule of law in Russia."
According to independent sources, Igor Sergunin was the only one of the three to be found guilty and received a lighter sentence of three and a half years in prison. Alexei Liptser was sentenced to five years in a penal colony and Vadim Kobzev to five and a half years.
Kobzev's lawyer, Andrei Grivtsov, said the evidence against them constituted an illegal invasion of privacy.
"They are not allowed in principle to spy on meetings between a lawyer and a client in a penal colony - there is a direct legislative ban," he told BBC Russia.
Alexei Liptser's lawyer, Andrei Orlov, told reporters that Friday's court decision was very sad: "But we will not stop immediately. We will continue to move forward."
The three lawyers were tried near the Pokrov penal colony, where Navalny was initially sent on his return to Russia in January 2021, after surviving a nerve agent attack that Russian leader Vladimir Putin blamed. The Kremlin denied the charges and Navalny remained in Russian penal colonies until his death, north of the Arctic Circle and 1,200 kilometers northeast of Moscow.
His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, blamed Putin for his death, which authorities attributed to "sudden death syndrome."
A few months after Navalny's arrest in 2021, Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation and its regional offices were banned by a Moscow court, which labeled them "extremist."
Navalny, who was already in prison on other charges, was later convicted of founding and financing an extremist organization.
The director of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, Ivan Zhdanov, noted that the three lawyers were sentenced on January 17 - the same day Navalny was arrested and imprisoned after his return to Russia from Germany: "I think it's a coincidence." Amnesty International said that for the lawyers, "simply doing their job, the Russian authorities have dismantled what remains of the right to legal protection." Investigators said the three men had acted as members of Navalny's "extremist community," meeting and sharing information with the opposition leader.
Yulia Navalnaya said the three men were "political prisoners and should be released immediately."
Another of Navalny's lawyers, Olga Mikhailova, who fled Russia, said the sentences were "brutal and absurd" and that the men were punished for the honest performance of "their duties, their professional and moral position".
Ms. Mikhailova, whose offices were raided in 2023, says she herself has been accused of extremism. Another of Navalny's lawyers, Alexander Fedulov, also fled Russia after the arrest of three of his colleagues. Following his arrest, Navalny appeared at a court hearing in October 2023 from a high-security penal colony in eastern Moscow and complained that he had been denied legal representation.
"My lawyer is not here. All the other lawyers are not here. No one is allowed to visit me. I am isolated and cut off from any information," he said during the hearing. Two months later he was transferred to an even more remote penal colony called Polar Wolf, where he was held in a punishment cell and died at the age of 47. His widow dismissed the cause of death given by the authorities as a lie.
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