Russia jails lawyers who acted on behalf of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny

Three lawyers who represented the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny have been sentenced to prison terms of up to five and a half years on charges of participation in an “extremist organization.”

Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser were arrested in October 2023 as Russian authorities stepped up pressure on the imprisoned Kremlin critic, who died suddenly last February in an Arctic penal colony.

They were tried behind closed doors in Petushki, a town east of Moscow, and accused of “using their status” to pass messages between Navalny and his colleagues.

Navalny had condemned the case as reminiscent of Soviet times and an indication of the “rule of law in Russia.”

Igor Sergunin was the only one of the three to admit the charge, according to independent reports, and he received a lighter sentence of three and a half years.

Alexei Liptser was imprisoned for five years in a penal colony and Vadim Kobzev was sentenced to five and a half years.

Kobzev’s own lawyer, Andrei Grivtsov, said the evidence against him amounted to an illegal invasion of privacy.

“In principle, they are not allowed to spy on meetings between a lawyer and a client in a penal colony; there is a direct legislative prohibition,” he told the Russian BBC.

The three lawyers were tried near the Pokrov penal colony, where Navalny was initially sent when he returned to Russia in January 2021, having survived a nerve agent attack that he blamed on Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin denied the accusation and Navalny remained in Russian penal colonies until his death, north of the Arctic Circle and 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow.

His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, blamed Putin for his death, which authorities attributed to “sudden death syndrome.”