Moscow court places Alexey Navalny’s associates under house arrest

Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court has placed Oleg Navalny, the brother of jailed Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny, under house arrest until March 23. This was reported by Mediazona on Friday, January 29.

The Tverskoy Court has also ordered that the same preventive measure be taken against Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina, Doctors’ Alliance director Anastasia Vasilieva, and Anti-Corruption Foundation employee Lyubov Sobol.

The coordinator of Team Navalny’s Moscow headquarters, Oleg Stepanov, was also placed under house arrest until March 23 by the same court earlier on Friday.

Oleg Navalny, Maria Alyokhina, Anastasia Vasilieva, Lyubov Sobol, and Oleg Stepanov are all suspects in a criminal case launched over alleged violations of sanitary and epidemiological rules (article 236 of the Russian Criminal Code) during the protests opposing Alexey Navalny’s detention in Moscow on January 23.

Mediazona underscores that house arrest is the most stringent preventive measure available for suspects in criminal cases under article 236.

• Oleg Navalny, Maria Alyokhina, Anastasia Vasilieva, and Lyubov Sobol were arrested as suspects in the criminal case on January 27. Oleg Stepanov was arrested on January 28.
• Also on January 27, police officials carried out searches at the homes of the suspects and their parents. Officers also searched the registered addresses of Mediazona editor-in-chief Sergey Smirnov, Moscow Municipal Deputy Lusya Shteyn, Nikolay Kasyan (the spokesman for Moscow Municipal Deputy Yulia Galyamina), and Libertarian Party members Igor Yefremov and Gleb Bykov.