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Navalny To Appeal Arrest As 3 Moscow Duma Candidates File Complaints With Election Officials
By RFE/RL July 29, 2019
The Moscow City Court is scheduled to hear an appeal on July 30 by opposition activist Aleksei Navalny over his 30-day prison sentence, his lawyer Olga MIkhailova said.
He was sentenced after calling for an unauthorized protest on July 27 during which nearly 1,400 demonstrators were detained in a crackdown by police that has been internationally condemned as violent and "disproportionate."
"I ask in the appeal to terminate Navalny's administrative case due to the lack of evidence or to terminate his administrative arrest due to his poor health condition," Mikhailova said on July 29.
The rally took place in protest of Moscow election officials who have refused to register several independent and opposition candidates to run in the September 8 vote to the 45-seat Moscow City Duma legislature.
The municipal legislature has oversight over Moscow's $43 billion budget, the largest of any city in the country.
Three candidates who were denied registration for the elections filed complaints on July 29 with the Central Election Commission.
Yulia Serebyakova, Konstantin Lisitsa, and Ivan Zhdanov, director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, lodged the complaints.
The United States, the European Union, Canada, and human rights groups denounced what they called the "disproportionate" and "indiscriminate" use of force against the demonstrators.
"Freedom of assembly and expression are fundamental rights and enshrined in [the Russian] constitution," Canada's foreign ministry tweeted on July 29.
The July 27 police crackdown was one of the biggest in recent years against an opposition that has grown more defiant while denouncing Russian President Vladimir Putin's hold on power.
Fears swirled that Navalny was poisoned after he was taken to a prison hospital on July 28 with what his spokeswoman said was "severe swelling of the face and skin redness."
However, his attending physician, Anastasia Vasilyeva, suspected poisoning and Navalny said he didn't rule out the possibility on July 29 after he was discharged and moved back to prison.
The Kremlin critic posted a picture of himself in social media with a bloated face and one eye shut that he couldn't open.
Others whose candidacy was rejected was politician Dmitry Gudkov, Zyuzino municipal deputy Konstantin Yankauskas, and Anti-Corruption Foundation lawyer Lyubov Sobol.
With reporting by Reuters and Interfax
Copyright (c) 2019. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
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