Basmanny court restricted Navalny from familiarizing himself with his criminal case

The Basmanny Court of Moscow granted the request of the prosecutor’s office to restrict Alexei Navalny (included in the list of terrorists and extremists of Rosfinmonitoring) in terms of familiarization with the materials of the extremism case, a Vedomosti correspondent reports. The deadline for familiarization is May 5, 2023. He participated in the meeting via video link from the colony, where he is already serving a sentence for particularly large-scale fraud, contempt of court, slander of a veteran and the Yves Rocher case.

The investigator in court said that at the moment, 11 more people are on the international wanted list in the case of extremism. In order to prevent the disclosure of the data of the preliminary investigation, the representative of the Investigative Committee asked the court to close the meeting from the press and listeners. The lawyers and Navalny insisted on an open trial, since the trial in the Basmanny Court, in their opinion, does not affect the case on the merits, but considers the issue of limiting the time for familiarization. There are 196 volumes in the criminal case. Judge Yevgenia Nikolaeva, after listening to the parties, agreed with the investigator and asked the public to leave the courtroom.

At the beginning of the meeting, Navalny said that his case on terrorism was separated into a separate proceeding “And the case will be considered by a military court. There I am threatened with a life sentence,” said the accused.

On October 20, 2022, lawyer Vadim Kobzev stated that a new criminal case had been initiated against his client on several episodes: public calls for extremism and terrorism, propaganda of terrorism, financing of extremist activities, as well as the rehabilitation of Nazism. On March 22, 2022, the Lefortovo Court of Moscow, at an offsite hearing in the Pokrova colony in Vladimirskaya, sentenced Navalny to 9 years in a strict regime colony with a fine of 1.2 million rubles, finding him guilty of especially large-scale fraud (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and contempt of court (parts 1, 2 of article 297 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Prior to the decision of the Lefortovo court, Navalny was serving a sentence in the “Yves Rocher case”: in early 2021, he was sentenced to 2.8 years in prison after returning from treatment in Germany. Now Navalny is serving his sentence in a strict regime penal colony in the village of Melehovo, Kovrovsky district, Vladimir region.