The prison service made the announcement after the flight with Navalny landed in the Russian capital, albeit at a different airport than planned. It was a possible attempt to outwit journalists and supporters who wanted to witness Navalny’s return.
The Russian prison service issued a warrant for his arrest last week, saying he had violated the terms of suspended sentence he received due to a 2014 conviction for embezzlement. The jail service has asked a Moscow court to turn Navalny’s suspended sentence of 3 1/2 years into a real case.
After boarding a flight from Moscow to Berlin on Sunday, Navalny said of the prospect of arrest: ‘It is impossible; I’m an innocent man. ‘
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied a role in the poisoning of the opposition leader.
Navalny supporters and journalists arrived at the Vnukovo airport in Moscow, where the plane was to land, but it eventually landed at Sheremetyevo airport, about 40 kilometers away. There was no immediate explanation for the flight diversion.
According to the OVD-Info group, which monitors political arrests, at least 37 people were arrested at Vnukovo airport, although their connections were not immediately clear.
Vnukovo has banned journalists from working inside the terminal, and said in a statement last week that the move was due to epidemiological concerns. The airport also blocked access to the international arrival area.
Police detainees were detained outside the terminal on Sunday.
The independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper and the opposition’s social media reported on Sunday that several Navalny supporters in Moscow had been removed from Moscow trains or prevented from flying in late Saturday and early Sunday, including the coordinator of its staff for the region of Russia. second largest city.
Navalny fell into a coma on August 20 while on board a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow. He was transferred from a hospital in Siberia to a Berlin hospital two days later.
Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, determined that he was exposed to a Soviet era of the Novichok nerve.
Russian authorities insisted that the doctors who treated Navalny in Siberia before he was transported to Germany found no traces of poison and challenged German officials to provide evidence of his poisoning. They refused to launch a full-fledged criminal investigation, citing a lack of evidence that Navalny had been poisoned.
Last month, Navalny released the recording of a phone call he said he made to a man he described as a suspected member of a group of Federal Security Service officers, or FSBs, who allegedly August poisoned and then tried to cover. on. The FSB dismissed the survey as false.