Moscow court rejects second lawsuit against Navalny’s flight risk status

Moscow’s Preobrazhensky District Court has rejected Alexey Navalny’s lawsuit against the administration of the Matrosskaya Tishina remand prison, his lawyer Vadim Kobzev told the state news agency TASS on June 25.

Navalny’s claim challenged the remand prison commission’s decision to preventatively register him as “liable to escape.” This decision was made on February 18, 2021, when the opposition politician was still in pre-trial custody in Moscow.

The defense argued that Navalny’s flight risk status could affect his eligibility for early release on parole. Following his transfer to a prison colony in the city of Pokrov in March, Navalny complained of “torture by insomnia” — because he is considered a prone to escape, the prison staff wake him up every hour throughout the night as they conduct checks, he said.

Earlier, Navalny filed an identical lawsuit against the administration of the Pokrov prison where he is serving out his sentence. During a court hearing in the Vladimir region on June 2, Navalny said that there “isn’t a single reason” why he was deemed a flight risk and that these conditions violate his right to uninterrupted sleep. The Vladimir region’s Petushinsky Court dismissed the claim.