KREMLIN CRITIC NAVALNY LOSES APPEAL ON TERRORIST, EXTREMIST LABEL

Wed 08 June 2022:

Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned Russian opposition leader, has lost an appeal against a decision by prison officials to declare him “inclined to commit terrorist or extremist crimes.”

Navalny, who has been behind bars since January 2021, was first designated by the penitentiary authorities as a flight risk, which implied additional checks and inspections in prison. But in October last year officials replaced that label with the “terrorist or extremist” one.

“I was worried they would demand that I kissed portraits of Putin and learned quotes by Medvedev, but it wasn’t necessary. It is just that my bunk bed now has a label that describes me a terrorist,” Navalny, in his usual sardonic matter, commented on the move at the time in a social media post.

He and his defence team filed an appeal contesting the label, but a panel of judges in Russia’s Vladimir region about 100 kilometres east of Moscow on Tuesday rejected the appeal and ruled to keep the designation in place.

Navalny was arrested upon his return to Moscow from Germany, where he was treated for a poison attack in Siberia in 2020 with what European labs defined as a Soviet-style nerve agent.

He was then handed a two-and-a-half year prison sentence for violating the terms of an earlier parole during of his convalescence abroad. The original conviction is widely regarded as a trumped-up, politically motivated case.

In March, Navalny was sentenced in another case to nine years in prison on embezzlement and contempt charges that he and his supporters have repeatedly rejected as politically motivated.

Last week, Navalny said new charges for “creating an extremist group” in connection with his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and groups associated with it had been filed against him.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

FOLLOW INDEPENDENT PRESS:

TWITTER (CLICK HERE)
https://twitter.com/IpIndependent