Presence Of Foreign Diplomats At Hearing On Navalny Case Common Practice - US Embassy

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd February, 2021) The US Embassy in Russia on Tuesday said that the presence of foreign diplomats at opposition figure Alexey Navalny's trial was in accordance with common practice of diplomatic missions across the world.

Earlier on Tuesday spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova said that the presence of some 20 diplomats from other countries, including the US, Austria, Poland, Bulgaria, and Latvia during a hearing in Navalny's case amounted to interference in Russia's internal affairs.

"Given continued COVID-19 precautions and the large number of persons expected at the court, we requested authorization to observe the trial remotely, but received no response from Russian authorities. However, U.S. diplomats in Moscow have been watching Navalny's case closely and are monitoring media reports on the hearing. It is standard practice for diplomatic missions throughout the world to observe court sessions in their host country," the embassy told RIA Novosti.

The hearing began earlier on Tuesday in Moscow's Simonovsky District Court. The judge is due to establish whether Navalny's suspended sentence in the Yves Rocher fraud case should be replaced with real time in prison under a request of the Russian detention authority.

Navalny returned to Russia from Germany last month after receiving medical treatment following a suspected poisoning in Siberia, evidence for which the German health experts allegedly found in his body, namely, traces of a nerve agent from the Novichok group. Moscow has consistently rejected the findings and requested for the evidence to be shared with it.