Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, lost another court battle on Thursday in his effort to resist the Kremlin’s growing crackdown on himself and other dissidents.
Russian news agencies reported that a court has rejected the latest in a series of lawsuits Navalny filed against prison authorities because of his incarceration.
The 46-year-old politician and activist is serving a nine-year sentence in the IK-6 maximum security prison, located in the town of Melekhovo, in the Vladimir region, about 250 kilometers east of Moscow.
Video of a hearing showed Navalny speaking in court remotely from a small prison room.
The politician opposed to the Putin regime was on his feet, gesturing with his hands and protesting vehemently against the authorities’ decision to place him in an isolation cell.
“I am considered the worst offender and I am in solitary confinement due to the systematic creation of ridiculous violations,” Navalny told the judge in the Kovrov regional city of Vladimir.
Earlier this year, Russian prison authorities arrested Navalny and put him in a cell for five days for calling a policeman by name and again for seven days for walking three seconds in that cell without keeping his hands behind his back. , thus violating the prison rules. .
At Thursday’s hearing, Navalny complained about the unfair treatment he is being subjected to.
“There are people in cell-like rooms, but there is no one but me in a cell. In fact, any convicted person should be put in a cell, because there are no conceivable minor infractions of more than two seconds.” [sem] hands behind your back,” Navalny said.
On August 21, 2020, Navalny was admitted to a hospital in serious condition, suspected of having been poisoned, after feeling unwell during a flight to Moscow that made an emergency landing in the Siberian city of Omsk.
Days later, the Russian authorities authorized his transfer to Germany, where he was treated at the Charité university clinic in Berlin for 32 days for nerve agent poisoning.
After spending time in Germany, he returned to Russia in January 2021, but was detained upon landing in Moscow.
Source: TSF
