2023-11-13 19:12:01
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — A court in Siberia on Monday ordered jail time for an associate of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny accused of extremism, an ally of hers said, as part of Russian authorities’ crackdown on activists, independent journalists and workers. of human rights.
The court in the Siberian city of Tomsk ordered the jailing of Ksenia Fadeyeva, who ran Navalny’s office in that city and was a member of the local legislature. Fadeyeva was placed under preventive detention, several months after the trial against her began.
According to her ally Andrei Fateyev, who reported the news on his Telegram channel, Fadeyeva was placed under house arrest three weeks ago for allegedly violating previous restrictions. Her prosecutor asked to annul that decision of hers and rather put her in jail, and the judge agreed, Fateyev said.
Fadeyeva is accused of leading an extremist group and promoting “activities of an organization that violates people’s rights.”
Fateyev maintained that Fadeyeva is being punished for “legal and political activities, for fighting corruption and demanding a change of power.”
Several of Navalny’s associates are now accused of extremism after authorities outlawed his Anti-Corruption Foundation and its network of regional offices in 2021, a move that left anyone associated with them susceptible to legal action.
A few months ago, Navalny himself was convicted of extremism and sentenced to 19 years in prison. It was the fifth guilty verdict against him and his third and longest prison sentence. Both Navalny and his supporters maintain that all the proceedings against him are nothing more than an attempt to silence him.
Navalny was arrested in January 2021 when he returned from Germany after recovering from an attempt to poison him that he attributes to the Kremlin. He has since been imprisoned, and his allies have left Russia under pressure from authorities following massive protests that shook the country after Navalny’s arrest. The Kremlin denies having been involved in the attempt to poison the opposition leader.
Many people working in its regional offices have also left the country, but others stayed and were arrested. Liliya Chanysheva, who ran Navalny’s office in the central city of Ufa, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison in June on charges of extremism. Daniel Kholodny, formerly the technical director of Navalny’s YouTube channel, was sentenced in August to spend eight years behind bars.
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