Opposition leader Alexei Navalny denounced a Moscow court hearing on Tuesday on whether he should be sent to prison for years, calling it a vain attempt by the Kremlin to scare millions of Russians into submission.
The 44-year-old Navalny, an anti-corruption investigator who is the most prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, was arrested January 17 upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities deny the charge and claim, despite tests by several European labs, that they have no proof he was poisoned.
Speaking in court, Navalny attributed his arrest to Putin’s “fear and hatred,” saying that the Russian leader will go down to history as a “poisoner.”
“The aim of that hearing is to scare a great number of people,” Navalny said in court. “They jail one man to scare millions.”
Russia’s penitentiary service alleges that Navalny violated the probation conditions of his suspended sentence from a 2014 money laundering conviction that he has rejected as politically motivated. It has asked the Simonovsky District Court to turn his 3 1/2-year suspended sentence into one that he must serve in prison.
Navalny emphasized that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that his 2014 conviction was unlawful and Russia paid him compensation in line with the ruling.
Navalny and his lawyers have argued that while he was recovering in Germany from the poisoning, he couldn’t register with Russian authorities in person as required by his probation. Navalny also insisted that his due process rights were crudely violated during his arrest and described his jailing as a travesty of justice.