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Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s most distinguished opposition chief, who’s at the moment serving a 19-year sentence in a Russian penal colony, missed one other court docket date on Monday as his allies expressed concern at not having heard from him for greater than 5 days.
Mr. Navalny, 47, a fierce critic of President Vladimir V. Putin over the previous decade and a frequent goal of Kremlin assaults, was scheduled to seem in a district court docket within the metropolis of Kovrov through a video hyperlink.
However the display screen within the courtroom remained darkish and his allies mentioned that they had not been in contact with Mr. Navalny since Tuesday, Kira Yarmysh, his spokeswoman, mentioned on Monday.
In accordance with Ms. Yarmysh, authorities in Mr. Navalny’s penal colony have been blaming issues with electrical energy for his absence. However given the cruel nature of his imprisonment, serving one sentence after one other in a “punishment” cell, his allies have been satisfied there will need to have been different components at play.
“They’re simply mocking us,” Mr. Yarmysh mentioned on Monday in a post on X, previously often called Twitter.
Final Wednesday, Mr. Navalny’s lawyer couldn’t get entry to him within the penal colony after ready in entrance of the power for seven hours. There was no rationalization given, Ms. Yarmysh said, including that this was the primary time that had occurred.
The following day, Mr. Navalny missed a court docket listening to and his attorneys have been once more not allowed to see him, Mr. Yarmysh said. The identical state of affairs occurred once more on Friday, she mentioned.
“The truth that we are able to’t discover Alexey is especially worrying as a result of he fell sick in his cell final week: he acquired dizzy and laid down on the ground,” Ms. Yarmysh mentioned on Friday in a post on X. “Earlier than that, there have been no less than occasional letters from him, albeit censored ones, however there have been no letters all week.”
Whereas in jail, Mr. Navalny nonetheless managed to retain a big presence in Russia’s political opposition by publishing statements and delivering speeches in court docket. Final week, Mr. Navalny launched a marketing campaign urging his followers to vote for some other candidate than Mr. Putin within the subsequent presidential election scheduled for March.
Mr. Navalny has been in custody in Russia since his detention in January 2021 in a Moscow airport, the place he arrived after spending months in Germany, recovering from a poisoning by a nerve agent. Mr. Navalny blamed the Kremlin for the poisoning, however Russian authorities denied their involvement.
Subsequently, Russian authorities have introduced forth a large number of latest costs in opposition to him. According to Ms. Yarmysh, Mr. Navalny is at the moment a defendant in 14 legal circumstances and faces a possible sentence of as much as 35 years in jail.
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