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Navalny's lawyers sentenced to prison terms of up to 5 1/2 years on 'extremism' charges

Lawyers Igor Sergunin (L), Alexei Liptser (C) and Vadim Kobzev, who represented the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, were caged Friday as is the standard practice in Russia, as they were sentenced to prison terms of between 42 and 66 months for participating in their clients' "extremist" FBK anti-corruption community. Amnesty International said the three were being victimized for merely doing their jobs. Photo by Yuri Kochetkov/EPA-EFE
Lawyers Igor Sergunin (L), Alexei Liptser (C) and Vadim Kobzev, who represented the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, were caged Friday as is the standard practice in Russia, as they were sentenced to prison terms of between 42 and 66 months for participating in their clients' "extremist" FBK anti-corruption community. Amnesty International said the three were being victimized for merely doing their jobs. Photo by Yuri Kochetkov/EPA-EFE

Jan. 17 (UPI) -- A Russian court handed down prison sentences of between 42 and 66 months Friday to three lawyers of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny after they were convicted of aiding his Anti Corruption Foundation, which authorities have designated an "extremist" organization.

Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser were arrested in October 2023, four months before Navalny died at age 47 at a remote correctional facility inside the Arctic in February, on charges that they were acting as go-betweens, relaying messages from Navalny to his colleagues.

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Their arrest left Navalny without any legal representation and completely cut off from the outside world in the months before his death from what authorities claimed were natural causes at the Polar Wolf penal colony 1,200 miles northeast of Moscow.

Kobzev was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in penal colony, Lipster to five years, while Sergunin's term was reduced to 3 1/2 years in exchange for pleading guilty.

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The district court in Petushki, 75 miles east of Moscow, which no press or family were permitted to attend, also banned each of the men from practicing law for three years.

Kosbev's lawyer condemned the case, telling the BBC's Russian service that the evidence used to convict the men was inadmissible because it was obtained by listening in on client-attorney meetings which was illegal under Russian law.

"They're not allowed to eavesdrop on meetings between a lawyer and a client in a penal colony in principle -- there's a direct legislative ban."

Lipster's lawyer, Andrei Orlov, while expressing regret at the outcome, vowed to fight on.

Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, herself living in exile and the target of a Russian arrest warrant, said in a post on X that the lawyers "were political prisoners and must be released immediately."

The U.K.-based Amnesty International called the long sentences handed down to the three "shameful," saying "their only crime" was standing up for justice and human rights and demanded they be set free.

"The prosecution and sentencing of Vadim Kobzev, Aleksei Liptser and Igor Sergunin is a shameful attempt to silence those who dared to defend Aleksei Navalny and make his voice heard even from behind bars," said Amnesty International Eastern Europe and Central Asia Director Marie Struthers.

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"By targeting lawyers for merely doing their job, the Russian authorities are dismantling what remains of the right to legal defense, and abusing what is a criminal justice system only in name.

"We call on the Russian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release these individuals and drop all charges against them."

Amnesty said the lawyers, who were added the national registry of "extremists and terrorists" by the Russian financial regulator in November, were the latest victims of an orchestrated campaign of arbitrary detentions, prosecutions and harsh criminal sanctions targeting associates and supporters of Navalny and his FBK.

The action formed a wider pattern of "unabashed misuse of anti-extremism legislation" by the Russian state to crack down on civic activists, Amnesty added.

FBK head Ivan Zhdanov noted the sentences were handed down exactly three years to the day from Navalny's arrest on his return to Russia in January 2021 after treatment abroad for near-fatal Novichok poisoning the previous summer, saying he very much doubted the timing was coincidental.

Years of harassment of the movement and other opposition political figures by authorities intensified in the months before a court banned FBK in June 2021 after the Kremlin made an application for it to be outlawed on grounds it was an "extremist organization."

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