After punishment, Navalny fails court hearing and is forcibly taken

O Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, who is being held in a high-security prison in Russia, refused, this Monday, to appear at a court hearing in retaliation for a punishment. According to his allies, President Vladimir Putin’s opponent was forcibly taken away by security forces.

Alexei Navalny was due to appear in court, via a video call hearing, as part of one of several lawsuits he filed against his prison sentence.

According to one of his allies, Ivan Zhdanov, from Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, the opponent refused to leave his cell after all his writing materials were taken from him.

“All writing materials were taken from Alexei Navalny. For this reason, he refused to leave his cell for the trial and investigative actions”revealed on the social network X (formerly Twitter), adding that “security forces with helmets entered the cell and, using force, dragged him towards the investigator”.

Details have become known.
All writing materials were taken away from Alexei Navalny.
Because of this, he refused to leave his cell for trial and investigative actions.
Security forces in helmets entered the cell and, using force, dragged him to the investigator.

— Ivan Zhdanov (@ioannZH) October 23, 2023

It should be noted that the Russian opponent was serving a sentence on probation after being accused of fraud – an accusation that he says was fabricated – when he was poisoned with a Novitchok-type neurotoxic agent, in August 2020.

After what he considers to be an assassination attempt by the Kremlin, the 47-year-old opponent was transferred, at his wife’s request, from Siberia to Germany to recover. He was detained upon returning to Russia on January 17, 2021.

He initially received a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence for violating his probation, but last year he was sentenced to nine years in prison for “fraud” and “contempt of court.” In August, 19 more were added for the crime of extremism.

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