Jailed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny said Thursday he faces new criminal charges for “promoting terrorism”, “advocating extremism”, “financing extremist activities” and “rehabilitating Nazism,” which carries a combined 30-year prison sentence.
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“According to the lawyers, the matter was about 30 years, taking into account the penalties stipulated in each of these articles” of the Penal Code, he said in a message broadcast by his team on social media.
The 46-year-old anti-corruption activist, who is considered the main critic of President Vladimir Putin, says he received a notice informing him of the opening of this new criminal case when he was already imprisoned.
“I am a genius of the criminal world (…) You all thought that I was in solitary confinement for two years, in prison, but in fact I was actively committing crimes,” he said sarcastically, congratulating the Russian investigators for “vigilance”.
According to him, these new accusations are clearly linked, in part, to videos posted by his allies in exile, who continue their campaign against Russian power from abroad.
Alexei Navalny was arrested in Russia in January 2021, upon his return to the country after being subjected to a serious attempted poisoning, which he attributes to the Kremlin.
He was sentenced last March to nine years in prison under a “severe” regime for “fraud”, which he considers fictitious.
He continues to send letters denouncing Vladimir Putin and his interference in Ukraine to his lawyer, which his team then publishes on the Internet.
This summer, he repeatedly claimed that he was put in a penal cell in his penal colony near Vladimir, 200 kilometers east of Moscow.
The West strongly denounced his poisoning in 2020, and then imprisoned him.
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