Moscow: Opposition leader Alexei Navalny denounced a Moscow court hearing Tuesday on whether he should be sent to prison for years. Alexei Navalny called it a vain attempt by the Kremlin to scare millions of Russians into submission.
The 44-year-old Navalny is an anti-corruption investigator. He is the most prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin. He was arrested January 17 upon returning from Germany. He had spent five months in Germany recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities deny the charge and claim. They have said despite tests by several European labs, they have no proof he was poisoned.
Speaking in court, Navalny attributed his arrest to Putin’s ‘fear and hatred’. He said that the Russian leader will go down to history as a ‘poisoner’. “The aim of that hearing is to scare a great number of people,” Navalny said in court. “They jail one man to scare millions.”
Russia’s penitentiary service alleges that Navalny violated the probation conditions of his suspended sentence from a 2014 money laundering conviction. Navalny had rejected the conviction as politically motivated. It has asked the Simonovsky District Court to turn his 3 1/2-year suspended sentence into one that he must serve in prison.
Navalny emphasised that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that his 2014 conviction was unlawful. Russia also paid him compensation in line with the ruling.
Navalny and his lawyers have argued that he was recovering in Germany from the poisoning. So he couldn’t register with Russian authorities in person as required by his probation. Navalny also insisted that his due process rights were crudely violated during his arrest. He described his jailing as a travesty of justice.
“I came back to Moscow after I completed the course of treatment,” Navalny said during Tuesday’s hearing. “What else could I have done?”
Navalny’s jailing has triggered massive protests across Russia for the past two weekends. Tens of thousands have taken to the streets to demand his release and chant slogans against Putin. Police detained over 5,750 people Sunday, including more than 1,900 here. Most were released after being handed a court summons, and they face fines or jail terms of seven to 15 days. Several people faced criminal charges over alleged violence against police.
“I am fighting and will keep doing it even though I am now in the hands of people who love to put chemical weapons everywhere. No one would give three kopecks for my life,” Navalny said.
Navalny’s team called for another demonstration Tuesday outside the Moscow courthouse. However, but police were out in force, cordoning off the nearby streets and making random arrests. More than 230 people were detained, according to the OVD-Info group that monitors arrests.
Some Navalny supporters still managed to approach the building. A young woman climbed a large pile of snow across the street from the courthouse. She held up a poster which said ‘Freedom to Navalny’. Less than a minute later, a police officer took her away.
After his arrest, Navalny’s team released a two-hour YouTube video featuring an opulent Black Sea residence allegedly built for Putin. The video has been viewed over 100 million times. The video has fuelled discontent as ordinary Russians struggle with an economic downturn, the coronavirus pandemic and widespread corruption during Putin’s years in office.
Putin insisted last week that neither he nor his relatives own any of the properties mentioned in the video. His long time confidant, construction magnate Arkady Rotenberg, claimed that he owns it.