Repeat offender, but not particularly dangerous

The First Court of Appeal on Tuesday upheld the legal sentence of politician Alexei Navalny, who received 19 years in prison on charges of extremism. The only change is that the reference to a particularly dangerous recidivism, which the Moscow City Court saw in the actions of the oppositionist, was removed from the motivational part, and now he is simply a dangerous recidivist. This will not entail any serious consequences in terms of the regime for serving the sentence, although it removes the risk of Mr. Navalny being transferred to a special regime colony, lawyers say.

The appeal process on September 26, like the trial court in August, was held behind closed doors: journalists were only allowed to hear the operative part of the decision. The last time Alexei Navalny was tried on the territory of IK-6 in the village of Melekhovo, Vladimir Region, where the politician was serving a sentence in previous cases of fraud and contempt of court: in March 2022, the Lefortovo Court of Moscow sentenced him to nine years in prison, of which two with He has already served half a year. This time, the trial took place in Moscow, and both defendants in this case – Alexey Navalny himself and the former technical director of Navalny Live, Daniel Kholodny – took part in it via video conference call.

Both were in a rather cheerful mood. “Have you been previously convicted?” — presiding judge Viktor Rogov asked the convicted Navalny. “It was a matter,” he answered condescendingly. “We’ve been in jail for a year and a half and we’ll still be in jail,” Citizen Kholodny told citizen Navalny, taking the opportunity to chat during a break. “I stopped by at 24, now I’m 26, and I didn’t even notice how the time flew by!”

Since the trial was held behind closed doors, the content of the charges against the politician is still known only in general terms: we are talking about the creation of an extremist community, whose activities were “aimed at undermining state integrity and the constitutional order in Russia.” The oppositionist was found guilty under six articles of the Criminal Code, including calls for extremism, organizing an extremist community and financing extremism.

On Tuesday it became known that violation of the right to a public and open trial in the court of first instance was one of the arguments in the complaint that Alexei Navalny’s lawyers filed against the verdict of the Moscow City Court. This, however, did not prevent the appeal court from again declaring the trial closed “to ensure the safety of its participants.”

The basis was a letter from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the authors of which, according to Judge Rogov, referred to possible attempts by Mr. Navalny and his supporters to influence the participants in the process. The oppositionist himself and his lawyers insisted on the presence of media representatives in court and emphasized that the letter from the Ministry of Internal Affairs on ensuring the safety of persons subject to state protection literally repeated a similar document sent to the court of first instance and did not contain information about the real circumstances on the basis of which it was possible would close the process. This is being done solely to ensure that the investigation’s arguments do not become the object of criticism in the media, Alexey Navalny insisted, because the accusations of extremism are far-fetched, and the investigation denies the results of its investigations.

Prosecutor Nadezhda Tikhonova (she also acted as a state prosecutor in the court of first instance) stated that she considered it justified to conduct the trial behind closed doors. She also demanded that she not be filmed during the announcement of the operative part of the decision, citing the norms of the Civil Code, which allow the use of an image of a person only with his consent.

Judging by the final decision of the court, other arguments in the appeal of the lawyers of Messrs. Navalny and Kholodny were also not heard. The verdict was left unchanged; the court only slightly adjusted the reasoning part of the decision, from which the appeal excluded the conclusion about the particular severity of the recidivism committed by Alexei Navalny.

“The only change is that the court removed a particularly dangerous recidivism from the sentence,” confirmed the defendant’s lawyer Olga Mikhailova. “At the same time, neither the assigned punishment, nor the term, nor any other changes in the sentence occurred. We will, of course, appeal and go to the cassation court.”

Indeed, nothing will change for the convicted Navalny now, agrees lawyer Dmitry Agranovsky. But if the sentence had entered into force in its original version, the oppositionist could have faced transfer to a special type of colony, and there the regime is much stricter compared to the maximum security colony where he is now located, the expert explains.

Let us note that under special regime, convicts do not live in barracks (as in general and even strict regime conditions), but in cell-type premises. In addition, unlike other regimes, they are entitled to only two short-term and two long-term visits per year and can receive only three parcels and three parcels during the same period.

Anastasia Kornya