Russian prosecutors seek sentences of over 5 years for Alexey Navalny’s lawyers

Russian state prosecutors have requested prison sentences of over five years for three of the lawyers who represented the late opposition politician Alexey Navalny, Novaya Gazeta reported on Tuesday.

The prosecution asked for Vadim Kobzev to be sentenced to five years and 11 months in prison, Alexey Liptser to five years and 10 months, and Igor Sergunin to five years and 6 months.

The three lawyers are currently on trial for “participating in an extremist community”, having been accused by investigators of facilitating Navalny in “leading an extremist community” by using their access to him in prison to pass on letters written by the late opposition leader to his associates.

Judge Yulia Shilova moved the trial behind closed doors in September, citing a letter from Russia’s Centre for Combating Extremism, which warned that employees of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation based outside Russia were engaging in “provocations” to influence witnesses and tamper with the trial.

Defence attorneys for Navalny’s lawyers challenged the judge’s decision, arguing that prosecutors simply wanted to ensure that their evidence wouldn’t be scrutinised by the media.

The three men have been in pretrial detention since October last year. Of the three, only Kobzev was still representing Navalny when he died at an Arctic penal colony in February. At a pretrial hearing, Sergunin pleaded guilty, while Kobzev and Liptser denied the charges against them.

Last week it emerged that prison staff had made secret video recordings of Navalny’s meetings with his lawyers while he was incarcerated. The videos, made with a hidden camera installed in the meeting room, showed Navalny meeting with Kobzev, Liptser and a third lawyer, Olga Mikhailova, in what was clearly a breach of attorney-client privilege.