New criminal charges threaten Alexey Navalny with 30 years in prison

A new Instagram post by Alexey Navalny details new criminal charges brought against the imprisoned opposition leader.

Navalny, who is currently serving a nine-year term at the Sixth maximum-security facility in the Vladimir region, says that the Investigative Committee has just opened yet another criminal case against him. He writes:

I’m a criminal mastermind. Professor Moriarty is smoking jealously in the corner. You thought I was isolated in prison, but it turns out that I’m actively committing crimes. It’s a good thing that the Investigative Committee remains vigilant, and misses nothing.

Got an official notice that a new criminal case has been opened in my regard, connected to the fact that, while in prison, I: promoted terrorism and made public calls to extremism; financed extremist activities; rehabilitated Nazism.

The investigators are framing Navalny as a criminal leader responsible for promoting terrorism and extremism by running the Popular Politics YouTube channel. That channel is, in fact, run by Navalny’s associates.

“The lawyers have calculated that, given the penalty of each of the charges, it’ll add up to some 30 years,” Navalny wrote.

• In February 2021, the court found Alexey Navalny guilty of defaming the World War II veteran Ignat Artyomenko. Navalny’s prior suspended sentence in the fabricated “Yves Rocher” case was replaced by a real prison term. Combined with the defamation penalty, this resulted in a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence.
• Following the defamation trial, Navalny was charged with contempt of court. Later, the prosecution merged the contempt case with a fraud case initiated in late 2020. On March 22, 2022, Navalny was sentenced to nine years in a maximum-security penal colony.
• On May 31, Navalny reported that he was also being charged with extremism.

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