This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
Aleksei Navalny has urged Russians to take to the streets in protest after a judge at a hastily arranged hearing in a makeshift courtroom just outside Moscow ruled to keep the Kremlin critic in police custody for 30 days after his dramatic airport arrest a day earlier.
At a January 18 hearing that Navalny called a “mockery of justice,” the judge ruled to keep him incarcerated until February 15 until a different court decides whether to convert a suspended 3 1/2 year sentence he served in an embezzlement case, which he says was trumped up, into real jail time.
“Don’t be afraid, take to the streets. Don’t go out for me, go out for yourself and your future,” Navalny said in the video, posted on YouTube.
Police led the 44-year-old away on January 17 at the Sheremetyevo International Airport’s passport-control booth after he arrived from Berlin, where he had been recovering from the attack in August that Navalny says was ordered by President Vladimir Putin.
Navalny’s detention has sparked global outrage and a chorus of international calls for his immediate release.
Aides said Navalny was denied access to his lawyers and notified at the last minute of the hearing, while his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh posted a video of the opposition politician chiding President Vladimir Putin for fearing him so much that he has abandoned the country’s laws altogether.
Navalny has been held incommunicado, his lawyers said, adding that they had not been granted access to him and that his condition was unknown.
“I’ve seen justice mocked many times, but this time the old guy in the bunker seems so scared that the Criminal Code has been ostentatiously ripped apart and thrown away,” Navalny said in a separate video before the ruling on Twitter in an apparent reference to Putin.
Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) said Navalny was being held because of “multiple violations” of the conditions of his suspended sentence relating to a 2014 fraud conviction and of evading criminal inspectors.
Navalny has said the case against him was trumped up and politically motivated.
Navalny, who Amnesty International on January 17 called a “prisoner of conscience,” was poisoned in August by what tests at Western laboratories showed was a Novichok nerve agent. He was flown to Germany for emergency medical care after falling acutely ill while traveling in Siberia.
The opposition politician, who has been jailed numerous times in Russia for organizing and leading anti-government protests, blames the poisoning on Russian authorities. Moscow denies any involvement.
The poisoning, which was similar to the near-fatal attack on Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in 2018 in the English city of Salisbury, drew widespread international attention, as did Navalny’s planned return after Russia’s prison authority warned of Navalny’s potential incarceration.
“We are deeply troubled by the arrest of [Aleksei] Navalny, and call for his immediate release and for his due process rights to be respected in line with the rule of law. We reiterate our call for a thorough and impartial investigation into his poisoning,” UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet’s office said on Twitter on January 18.
The UN’s call for Navalny’s release was echoed by the European Union, the United States and many other countries and human rights groups, who have called for the Kremlin to explain how he was attacked with a Soviet-style chemical weapon.
“The European Union condemns the detention of the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny upon his return to Moscow on 17 January and calls for his immediate release,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement on behalf of the bloc’s 27 nations.
“The EU will follow closely the developments in this field and will continue to take this into account when shaping its policy towards Russia.”
Former Soviet republics Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia pushed other EU members at a ministerial meeting on January 18 to expand punitive measures that the bloc imposed in October over Navalny’s poisoning.
“Lithuania, in the name of all three Baltic states, suggested to consider possible sanctions at today’s General Affairs Council over the arrest of [Aleksei] Navalny and so-called court hearing that is taking place now,” said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis.
“We are the realists towards Russia as we live at the border. I hope that some EU capitals will wake up from their optimism and return towards realism.”
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas early on January 18 called for Navalny’s immediate release. “Russia is bound by its own constitution and by international obligations to the principle of the rule of law and to the protection of civil rights,” he said in a statement.
“These principles must, of course, be applied to Aleksei Navalny as well. He should be released immediately.”
Britain also joined in the chorus of calls for the Kremlin to act on January 18, demanding Navalny’s release, saying Moscow should explain how he was attacked with a Soviet-style chemical weapon.
“It is appalling that Aleksei Navalny, the victim of a despicable crime, has been detained by Russian authorities. He must be immediately released,” Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said.
“Rather than persecuting Mr. Navalny, Russia should explain how a chemical weapon came to be used on Russian soil.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States “strongly condemns” Russia’s decision to detain Navalny.
“We note with grave concern that his detention is the latest in a series of attempts to silence Navalny and other opposition figures and independent voices who are critical of Russian authorities,” Pompeo said in a statement.
Russia, meanwhile, continued to shrug off the West’s consternation.
The Kremlin itself usually refers questions about Navalny to law enforcement agencies, but Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on January 18 called the condemnation of the detention an attempt to distract from the West’s own problems.
“You can feel the joy with which these comments [on Navalny’s arrest] are coming out,” Lavrov told a news conference in Moscow.
“Judging by everything, it allows Western politicians to think that by doing this they can divert attention away from the deep crisis that the liberal model of development finds itself in,” he added.
Navalny had been scheduled to arrive at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport, where hundreds of his supporters had gathered amid a massive riot-police presence.
At the last minute, however, authorities closed Vnukovo to incoming flights and diverted Navalny’s plane to Sheremetyevo airport on the other side of the capital.
Police detained numerous people who were awaiting Navalny’s arrival at Vnukovo, including Lyubov Sobol, a lawyer for Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation; Ruslan Shaveddinov, a project manager for the foundation; and Novaya Gazeta journalist Vlad Dokshin. Other journalists were also reportedly among the detained.
Sobol and others later said they were released and were facing administrative charges.
