- Title: PROFILE: Kremlin critic Navalny braced for court verdict on extremism case
- Date: 13th April 2023
- Summary: KOVROV, RUSSIA (FILE - OCTOBER 10, 2022) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF ENTRANCE TO THE IK-6 PENAL COLONY IN MELEKHOVO, NEAR KOVROV, WHERE NAVALNY IS BEING HELD
- Embargoed: 27th April 2023 14:56
- Keywords: KREMLIN NAVALNY OPPOSITION POLITICS PRISON PROTEST PUTIN RUSSIA
- Location: VARIOUS - SEE SCRIPT
- City: VARIOUS - SEE SCRIPT
- Country: Russia
- Topics: Europe,Government/Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA00H467113042023RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: EDIT CONTAINS PROFANITY IN SHOT 42
Jailed Russian opposition leader and prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is to appear in court on Friday (August 3) to face a verdict to could hand him a fresh sentence of two decades in prison.
Earlier, Russia's state prosecutors requested he be given a 20-year sentence following charges that include extremism.
Navalny has been on trial since late June, behind closed doors, at the IK-6 penal colony in Melekhovo, about 235 km (145 miles) east of Moscow, where he is already serving sentences totalling 11.5 years on fraud and other charges that he says were trumped up to silence him.
President Vladimir Putin's most prominent and vocal opponent faces a grab-bag of new charges, which he says are similarly fabricated to keep him out of political life.
Court records show they relate to six different articles of the Russian criminal code, including inciting and financing extremist activity and creating an extremist organisation.
Russia has outlawed Navalny's campaign organisation as part of a crackdown on dissent that started well before the conflict in Ukraine and has intensified in the nearly 17 months since it started.
The Kremlin denies persecuting Navalny and says his case is a matter for the courts.
Navalny is a former lawyer who rose to prominence more than a decade ago by lampooning President Vladimir Putin's elite and voicing allegations of corruption on a vast scale. Navalny's supporters cast him as a Russian version of South Africa's Nelson Mandela who will one day be freed from jail to lead the country.
Conversely, Russian authorities view him and his supporters as extremists with links to the U.S. CIA intelligence agency intent on trying to destabilise Russia. They have outlawed his movement, forcing many of his followers to flee abroad.
In 2020, Navalny survived an apparent attempt to poison him during a flight in Siberia, with what Western laboratory tests determined was a nerve agent. Navalny accused the Russian state of trying to kill him, something it denied. He was treated for that poisoning in Germany but voluntarily returned to Russia in 2021, where he was arrested on arrival and jailed. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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