Anti-Corruption Foundation: Alexey Navalny on trial again, prosecution to seek 35-year sentence

On April 26, Moscow’s Basmanny court will hold the first hearing in a new case against the opposition politician and Anti-Corruption Foundation founder Alexey Navalny.

ACF Director Ivan Zhdanov tweeted about the scheduled hearing, adding that the convicted politician, who is now serving his sentence, will take part in the new round of court proceedings. “This means the start of a major new criminal trial for Navalny,” Zhdanov wrote.

According to another Navalny associate, Leonid Volkov, the prosecution’s goal is to qualify, retroactively, all cooperation with ACF since 2011 as extremist activity. Volkov writes that prosecutors will seek a 35-year cumulative sentence for the opposition leader.

“Navalny is limited in his communications with his legal team,” Volkov points out. Although the case materials comprise “hundreds of volumes,” he writes, the imprisoned politician cannot even use a pen and paper in preparing for his court appearances.

Last October, Navalny wrote that Russia’s Investigative Committee had launched a new criminal case against him. The new set of allegations, he said, included terrorist and extremist propaganda, financing of extremism, and “rehabilitation of the Nazi ideology.”

“The lawyers have calculated that, given the penalties for each of the charges, cumulatively this should add up to some 30 years,” the politician wrote at the time.