Russia's Supreme Court extends detention of Navalny's lawyers until trial on extremism charges

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s Supreme Court on Tuesday extended the pre-trial detention of three lawyers who once represented Russia’s murdered opposition leader Alexei Navalnyand they are now accused of extremism. Their case was also refused to be transferred to another court, despite the defense claiming a conflict of interest.

Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser were arrested in October in a case that was widely seen at the time as a means of increasing pressure on the Kremlin's bitterest enemy.

According to Navalny's allies, the authorities accused the lawyers of using their status as defense attorneys to forward letters from the imprisoned politician to his team, thus acting as intermediaries between Navalny and his so-called “extremist group.”

Navalny’s organizations in Russia – the Anti-Corruption Foundation and a vast network of regional offices – were ostracized and labeled as extremist groups in 2021, a move that exposed all those involved to criminal prosecution.

The lawyers of the three lawyers had asked the Supreme Court to stop referring their case to a court in the western Russian region of Vladimir, arguing that it might not be objective or impartial.

The defense argued that most of the prosecution's evidence was gathered in a law enforcement raid that it says was illegal and ordered by a higher court in the same region – which it said represented a conflict of interest. It also accused Navalny of courts in Vladimir pressuring Navalny's lawyers to disclose confidential communications with him before the politician died in a remote Arctic prison in February.

Navalny himself was is serving a prison sentence In total, he was sentenced to more than 30 years in prison, including on charges of extremism linked to his anti-corruption campaign. He and his allies dismissed all charges against him as politically motivated and accused the Kremlin of sending him to prison for life.

In February, Russian authorities also put two more of Navalny's lawyers on the wanted list. One of them, Olga Mikhailova, who had defended the politician for a decade, said she had previously been charged in absentia with extremism after she fled the country. The other, Alexander Fedulov, also said last year that he was no longer in Russia.