Moscow: Russia’s prison service said Thursday that top Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny will face immediate arrest once he returns from Germany. Alexi Navalny is convalescing in Germany from an August poisoning with a nerve agent. The critic has blamed the poisoning on the Kremlin. He asserted that he will fly back home Sunday. He accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of now trying to deter him from coming home with the threat of arrest. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied a role in the opposition leader’s poisoning.
At the end of December, the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), warned Navalny that he faced time in prison if he fails to immediately report to its office. This was regarding the terms of a suspended sentence and probation he received for a 2014 conviction. He was charged of embezzlement and money laundering. Navalny, however rejected the charges as ‘politically motivated’. The European Court for Human Rights had ruled that his conviction was unlawful.
The FSIN said in a statement Thursday that it issued an arrest warrant for Navalny in late December after his failure to report to its office. The prison service, which has asked a Moscow court to turn Navalny’s 3 1/2-year suspended sentence into a real one, noted that it’s ‘obliged to take all the necessary action to detain Navalny pending the court’s ruling’.
Navalny is the most visible Putin critic. He had received numerous brief jail terms over the past years. He fell into a coma while aboard a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow August 20. He was transferred from a hospital in Siberia to a Berlin hospital two days later.