PETUSHKI, Russia (AP) — The trial of three lawyers who once represented late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny got underway in Russia on Thursday.
Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser were arrested in October 2023 on charges of involvement with an extremist group, in a case widely seen at the time as a means to ramp up pressure on the Kremlin’s fiercest foe. Their trial is taking place in a court in the town of Petushki about 100 kilometers (roughly 60 miles) east of Moscow.
According to Navalny’s allies, authorities accused the lawyers of using their status as defense attorneys to pass letters from the imprisoned politician to his team, thus serving as intermediaries between Navalny and what they called his “extremist group.”
Navalny’s organizations in Russia — the Foundation for Fighting Corruption and a vast network of regional offices — were outlawed and labeled as extremist groups in 2021, a step that exposed anyone involved with them to prosecution.
Navalny had been serving prison terms totaling 19 years, including on extremism charges stemming from the 2021 court ruling that designated his organizations as extremist. He and his allies had rejected all charges against him as politically motivated, and accused the Kremlin of seeking to jail him for life.
In February 2024, he suddenly died in a remote Arctic penal colony in what his team and his widow Yulia Navalnaya charged to be a murder ordered by the Kremlin. Officials have rejected the accusations.
