A Russian court sentenced three lawyers who defended the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to up to five and a half years in prison, on charges of participating in an “extremist organization.”
Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptzer were arrested in October 2023 as Russian authorities intensified pressure on the jailed Kremlin critic, who died suddenly last February in an Arctic prison colony.
They were tried behind closed doors in the town of Petushki, east of Moscow, and accused of “using their status” to relay messages between Navalny and his colleagues.
Navalny had condemned the case as an example of the Soviet era, and an indicator of “the state of the rule of law in Russia.”
Igor Sergunin was the only one of the three who admitted the charge, according to independent reports, and was sentenced to three and a half years in prison.
Alexei Liptzer was imprisoned for five years in a penal colony, and Vadim Kobzev was sentenced to five and a half years.
Kobzev's lawyer, Andrey Grivtsov, said the evidence against them amounted to an illegal invasion of privacy.
He told BBC Russia: “They are not allowed to eavesdrop on meetings between a lawyer and his client in a penal colony in principle, there is a direct legislative ban.”
The three lawyers were put on trial near the penal colony in Pokrov, where Navalny was initially sent when he returned to Russia in January 2021, after surviving a nerve agent attack that he blamed on Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin denied the allegation, and Navalny remained in Russian penal colonies until his death, north of the Arctic Circle and 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow.
His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, blamed Putin for his death, which authorities attributed to “sudden death syndrome.”
