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Navalny Attorney Goes Incommunicado After Three Other Lawyers For Imprisoned Kremlin Critic Arrested

By Current Time October 16, 2023

Aleksandr Fedulov, a lawyer of imprisoned Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, has gone incommunicado after three other lawyers who defended the Kremlin critic were arrested last week.

Navalny's team wrote on Telegram on October 16 that Fedulov did not show up at Navalny's hearing in the penal colony as scheduled and that his telephone appeared to have been switched off.

The Vyorstka Telegram channel cited an associate of Fedulov as saying the lawyer has not been detained and is in a place of "safety."

Fedulov's father and sister told Vyorstka they do not know his whereabouts.

Last week, Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin, and Aleksei Lipster -- three lawyers who have defended Navalny -- were detained and later sent to pretrial detention for at least two months on a charge of taking part in an extremist group's activities.

Navalny's groups and organization were labeled as extremist and banned in Russia in 2021.The punishment for taking part in an extremist group's activities while using the powers of an official position is up to 12 years in prison.

In August, judges of the Moscow City Court found Navalny guilty of creating an extremist organization and more than doubled his term to 19, ruling that one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's sharpest critics must be transferred to a harsher "special regime" facility, rather than the maximum-security prison where he currently is held.

Last month, after a court rejected his appeal against the 19-year sentence, Navalny said he had been informed that he will be transferred to the strictest possible prison cell for one year.

It was unclear whether the punishment will be carried out in a special regime prison or in the maximum-security IK-6 penal colony 250 kilometers east of Moscow where he is currently held.

Navalny has been in and out of solitary confinement since August last year, and his allies say his health has deteriorated.

The charges against Navalny are widely seen as retribution for his efforts to expose what he describes as the pervasive lawlessness, corruption, and repression by President Vladimir Putin and his political system.

Navalny was Russia's loudest opposition voice and galvanized huge anti-government rallies before he was jailed.

His previous sentence was handed down in 2021 after he arrived in Moscow from Germany, where he had been recovering from a poisoning attack he blamed on the Kremlin. Before the most recent conviction, he was serving a combined 11 1/2 years for embezzlement and violating the terms of his parole while he was in Germany being treated for the poisoning.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/navalny-lawyer-missing-arrests- russia/32639832.html

Copyright (c) 2023. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.