MOSCOW – Russian opposition leader Alexei A. Navalny has been charged with felony criminal mischief for firing on a sculpture with a shotgun.
Navalny’s lawyer was informed on Monday afternoon that his client would receive a court hearing within minutes to consider whether he would stay in jail. According to a letter posted online by the lawyer, Vadim Kobzev, the trial would not take place in a courtroom, but at the police station in Khimki, the city outside Moscow where Mr. Navalny was detained.
The Russian legal system is not independent, but is usually aimed at maintaining the veneer of procedural impartiality in cases against opposition figures. On Monday, however, it appears that the authorities are doing everything in their power to arrest Mr. Keep Navalny’s fans in balance by processing his case at an incredible speed.
Photos posted by mr. Kobzev showed a temporary courtroom at the police station, with a simple table and a microphone in front of a notice board. In a video posted on Mr. Navalny’s Telegram account was placed, a judge appeared in a black robe in front of the plate. Mr Navalny said he had been led from his jail cell to the room a minute earlier.
“What is happening here is impossible,” he said. Navalny in the video. “This is the highest degree of lawlessness – I can not call it anything else.”
Mr Navalny, longtime one of President Vladimir V. Putin’s most prominent critics, collapsed in August and fell into a coma and was transported to Germany for treatment. Laboratories in Germany, France and Sweden have determined that he was poisoned by a military nerve agent of the Novichok family, developed in the Soviet Union and Russia.
The opposition leader has promised to return to Russia as soon as he recovers, and last week announced his plans to fly to Moscow, despite the threat of arrest on arrival.
This is exactly what happened Sunday night: After Navalny’s flight landed at Sheremetyevo airport, police officers met him at the passport control and arrested him. He spent the night in the police station no. 2 in Khimki, near the airport, and denied access to his lawyer. Mr Kobzev was only admitted to the police station on Monday morning.
“It seems that the grandfather in the bunker is so scared of everything that they demonstratively tore apart the Code of Criminal Procedure and threw it in the trash,” said Mr. Navalny said and one of his captions for Mr. Putin used.
Most of the journalists gathered outside the police station were not allowed in, but at least three Kremlin news agents were able to enter through a back door.
“I demand that this procedure be as open as possible so that all media have the opportunity to observe the incredible absurdity of what is happening here,” he said. Navalny according to the judge said another video posted by his spokesman.
While Mr. Navalny facing the judge inside, about 50 journalists and supporters stand in the bitter cold outside the barbed wire fence around the police station, which is in a neighborhood of Soviet-era buildings.
A local district council member of the Liberal Yabloko party, Antonina B. Stetsenko, showed up with a poster showing Mr. Putin’s dismissive words about Mr. Navalny echoes: ‘Freedom to Alexei Navalny, the patient in the Berlin clinic that no one needs. “Within minutes, police officers told her to leave.
“I believe it is my duty to support him,” she said. Stetsenko said. “Nothing surprises me more in this country.”
Mr Navalny was detained minutes after arriving in Russia for the first time since August, when he was flown to Berlin in a coma. The Russian prison service has said it violated the terms of a six-year-old suspended sentence while recruiting in Germany.
“What a huge embarrassment for the entire legal system,” said Ivan Zhdanov, director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. posted on Twitter. “It’s just something incredible.”
Germany and the European Union Monday joined the international choir in which mr. Navalny is released. But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov insisted that the Kremlin did not intend to change course under pressure.
“Of course we have to think about our image, but we are not a lady coming to a ball,” Lavrov said during his annual news conference when asked what Navalny’s detention meant for Russia in the international arena. increase. “The Navalny case has acquired a foreign policy meaning that is artificial and, I would say, completely unjustified.”
But the step to Mr. Navalny continues to be seen around the world and by many Russians as a striking attempt by Mr. Putin to suppress the popular discontent bubbling up in the country.
“The Russian authorities must release him immediately and ensure his safety,” said Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, in a statement. “The detention of political opponents is against Russia’s international obligations.”
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in a Twitter message that Navalny’s detention was “totally incomprehensible” and called on Russia to respect the rule of law. In the United States, both the outgoing and incoming administrations have requested that Mr. Navalny was to be released, while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote that “confident political leaders do not fear competitive voices.”
Mr Lavrov, however, said Western officials saw the case as merely a welcome diversion from their own problems.
“We see how they grabbed yesterday’s news about Navalny’s return to Russia. One can really feel how happy they are commenting on it,” Lavrov said. “They are happy because it makes Western politicians think they can divert attention from the global crisis in which the liberal development model has found itself.”