Alexey Navalny remanded in custody for 30 days pending trial
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Following a hearing inside a police station in the town of Khimki, near Moscow, a judge has placed Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny under arrest for 30 days pending trial. Navalny, who stands accused of violating the terms of his probation in the Yves Rocher case, will remain in custody until February 15.
Navalny flew home to Moscow from Berlin on Sunday, January 17, after spending five months in Germany recovering from chemical nerve agent poisoning. He was taken into custody after landing at Sheremetyevo International Airport and his location was unknown for several hours following his arrest.
Navalny was unable to speak to his lawyers for more than 15 hours before the trial, as his legal team was denied entry into the police station until around 11:00 a.m. Monday morning. His lawyer, Olga Mikhailova, was notified of the hearing just minutes before it began.
Navalny will be kept in custody pending a trial to determine whether or not he evaded the oversight of Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service. If found guilty, he could be sentenced to 3.5 years in prison, minus the 10 months he spent under house arrest in the Yves Rocher case. The hearing is scheduled for January 29.
Update. Navalny is being taken to the Matrosskaya Tishina prison in Moscow, lawyers told his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh.
At the end of December 2020, Russia’s prison authorities accused Navalny of violating the terms of his probation and demanded that he appear immediately for a parole hearing in Moscow. This took place two days before the end of the opposition figure’s probationary period in the Yves Rocher case; the department didn’t file any prior complaints against Navalny during the five months that he was in Germany.
(1) The Yves Rocher case
In 2014, Alexey Navalny and his brother Oleg were found guilty of embezzlement and laundering funds stolen from two Russian companies associated with the French cosmetics brand “Yves Rocher.” Oleg Navalny was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison and Alexey Navalny was given a 3.5-year probation sentence. The brothers pleaded not guilty, calling the case politically motivated. In 2017, the European Court of Human Rights declared the verdicts “unjust” and ordered the Russian authorities to pay the Navalny brothers compensation. Their sentences were never overturned, however.