Russia sentences Navalny lawyers to years behind bars

Russia on Friday sentenced three lawyers who had defended Alexei Navalny to several years in prison for bringing messages from the late opposition leader from prison to the outside world.

The sentences come in the midst of a massive crackdown during Moscow's Ukraine offensive and as Russia seeks to punish Navalny's associates even after his unexplained death in an Arctic prison colony last February.

Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Liptser and Igor Sergunin were found guilty of participating in an "extremist organisation", a court in the town of Petushki ruled.

Kobzev, the most high-profile member of Navalny's legal team, was given five and a half, while Liptser was handed five years and Sergunin three and a half years.

Navalny's exiled widow Yulia Navalnaya said the lawyers are "political prisoners and should be freed immediately".

They were almost the only people visiting Navalny in prison while he served his 19-year sentence.

Navalny, Putin's main political opponent, communicated with the world by transmitting messages through his lawyers which his team then published on social media.

Passing letters and messages through lawyers is a normal practice in Russian prisons.

The men were sentenced after a closed-door trial in the town of Petushki -- a town about 115 kilometres (72 miles) east of Moscow -- near the Pokrov prison where Navalny was held before he was moved to a remote colony above the Arctic Circle where he died.

"We are on trial for passing Navalny's thoughts to other people," Kobzev said in court last week.

The court said the men had "used their status as lawyers while visiting convict Navalny... to ensure the regular transfer of information between the members of the extremist community, including those wanted and hiding outside the Russian Federation, and Navalny."

It said this allowed Navalny to continue "planning the preparation and creating conditions for committing crimes with an extremist character".

Navalny had condemned the arrests of the lawyers in October 2023 as "outrageous" and part of a campaign to further isolate him in jail.

The verdicts come several days before four independent journalists accused of helping Navalny will be back in court, facing up to six years in prison.

It also came four years after Navalny defiantly returned to Russia -- on January 17 2021 -- upon recovering from a poison attack that almost killed him.

In his messages to the outside world, Navalny denounced the Kremlin's Ukraine offensive as "criminal" and told supporters "not to give up",

Kobzev had last week compared Moscow's current crackdown on dissent to Stalin-era mass repression.

"Eight years have passed... and in the Petushki court, people are once again on trial for discrediting officials and the state agencies," he said, in a speech published by the Novaya Gazeta newspaper.

While Russia has increasingly jailed its citizens for dissent against the Kremlin, cases against lawyers defending those people are still rare.

The UIA International Lawyers Association has warned that the trial raises questions about the future of the profession in Russia.

"Defending a client, regardless of their political views or actions, is a cornerstone of the rule of law and a universal principle enshrined in international legal standards," the organization said last month.

It said the trial "sets a dangerous precedent" in "potentially deterring" lawyers from defending clients in sensitive cases.

International rights groups and some Western countries slammed the sentencing.

"Today marks yet another low point in the already dire human rights situation in the Russian Federation," Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp said on social media Friday.

Navalny's team has accused prison authorities of secretly filming Navalny's meetings -- meant to be confidential -- with his lawyers, publishing obtained footage on social media.

Last week, Navalnaya said Russia refused to remove her dead husband from its list of terrorists and extremists.

She published a December letter from Russia's financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring addressed to Navalny's mother that said the late opposition leader was still being investigated for money laundering and "financing terrorism".

"Why does Putin need this? Obviously not to stop Alexei from opening a bank account," Navalnaya said.

"Putin is doing this to scare you."