|
Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser were detained
last October and charged with belonging to an "extremist" group,
which can carry up to six years in prison. The trio have been
held in pre-trial detention since, and in November were added to
Russia's list of "terrorists and extremists".
Navalny, who died in an Arctic penal colony in February under
mysterious circumstances, was himself convicted under extremism
and other charges, and his political movement, the
Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), banned.
The state prosecutor in the trial, which opened on Thursday at a
district court just east of Moscow, petitioned Judge Yulia
Shilova to close the proceedings, citing a letter from Russia's
Centre for Combating Extremism, known as Centre E.
According to independent news site Mediazona, the letter says
that employees of Navalny's based outside Russia may be engaging
in actions to influence witnesses and other aspects of the
trial. All of Navalny's top allies live outside Russia.
A spokeswoman for Navalny did not immediately reply to a Reuters
request for comment.
Russian authorities have cast Navalny and his supporters as
Western-backed extremists seeking to destabilise Russia. His
allies and wife Yulia Navalnaya, who has taken up her husband's
mantle following his death, say they are fighting for a free,
democratic Russia without President Vladimir Putin.
Defence attorneys for Navalny's lawyers pushed back against the
judge's decision on Thursday, saying to close the trial would
violate basic tenets of legal transparency.
"Publicity is one of the inviolable judicial principles,"
Mediazona cited Andrei Grivtsov, the lawyer for Kobzev, as
saying.
Grivtsov added that the case materials were previously made
public at preliminary hearings, and "there were no security
violations" recorded.
Trials for serious crimes, such as treason, are often held
behind closed doors in Russia, where acquittal rates are near
zero.
In June a judge presiding at a trial for two leading Russian
theatre figures barred journalists and observers from the court,
citing unspecified alleged threats to some of the participants.
The director and playwright were later given six years in prison
for "justifying terrorism" in a ruling condemned by independent
observers as politicised.
(Reporting and writing by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by William
Maclean)
[© 2024 Thomson Reuters. All
rights reserved.]
Copyright 2022 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|
|
