The Russian prosecutor’s office on Tuesday demanded 13 years in prison against the opponent Alexei Navalny, sworn enemy of the Kremlin and victim of the exacerbated repression of the critical voices of President Vladimir Putin at work in Russia.
This 45-year-old anti-corruption activist has been on trial since mid-February within the very walls of his penal colony, 100 km east of Moscow, on charges of “fraud” and ” offense” to a magistrate whom he considers fictitious.
It is from this improvised court behind bars that the prosecutor Nadezhda Tikhonova requested a new heavy sentence against the opponent, who narrowly survived in 2020 a serious poisoning of which he accuses the Kremlin.
“I ask for a 13-year custodial sentence to be imposed,” said the prosecutor, quoted by Russian news agencies.
She also demanded an additional “two-year limitation of liberty” sanction and a fine of 1.2 million rubles (about C$13,000 at the current rate).
“You will not put everyone in prison! Go ahead, even ask 113 years, you don’t scare me or people like me, ”retorted Mr. Navalny during the hearing, quoted by his team on social networks.
Since February 2021, Alexeï Navalny has been serving a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence for another “fraud” case dating from 2014.
Opposed to the conflict in Ukraine
One of the opponent’s exiled lieutenants, Leonid Volkov, reacted immediately by saying that the authorities wanted, with this indictment, that he remain in prison “until the death of Vladimir Putin or Navalny”.
“He is an absolutely innocent man who is on trial because he tells the truth about Putin’s criminal regime,” added Lioubov Sobol, another ally in exile of Mr. Navalny, on Twitter.
Investigators accuse him of embezzling millions of rubles in donations to his anti-corruption organizations and of “contempt of court” during one of his previous hearings.
In 2020, the opponent, renowned for his viral investigations denouncing the negligence and corruption of the Russian elites, spent several months recovering in Germany after narrowly surviving poisoning by the powerful nerve agent Novichok, from which he holds Vladimir Putin for responsible.
He was arrested in January 2021 upon his return to Russia and sentenced to two and a half years in prison in an old “fraud” case. A sentence that caused an outcry in Western countries and sanctions against Moscow.
In June 2021, Mr. Navalny’s main organizations were branded as “extremist”, a decision that led to their closure and the prosecution of many of their activists. Many of them are now in exile.
In the process, the Russian authorities increased their pressure on opposition media and NGOs critical of power.
Alexei Navalny spoke out against the Russian army’s offensive in Ukraine and called on his supporters to demonstrate for peace despite the risk of arrest and serious legal proceedings.
“Russia is big, a lot of people live there, and not all of them are ready to give up their future and that of their children like cowards,” Navalny said on Tuesday.
“Everyone must act. In his own way, as best he can, given the circumstances, but to act, ”he then hammered on Instagram, still about the Russian intervention in Ukraine.
“War is the work of despotism. Those who want to fight war must only fight despotism,” he concluded, citing the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy.
Since the beginning of the Russian intervention in Ukraine on February 24, nearly 15,000 peaceful demonstrators have been arrested in Russia, according to the specialized NGO OVD-Info.
At the same time, the Russian government has tightened the screws again, passing two laws punishing heavy prison sentences for any denunciation of the conflict.
On the Internet, one of the last spaces for free expression in Russia, the authorities are also continuing their efforts and have blocked the social networks Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, as well as several independent Russian-speaking media.