MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th February, 2021) Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny, whose suspended sentence in an earlier fraud case was replaced with a prison term over probation breaches, cannot be called a prisoner of conscience anymore, Amnesty International Media Manager for Eastern Europe and Central Asia Alexander Artemyev confirmed to Russian outlet MediaZona.
Canadian-US journalist Aaron Mate on Tuesday posted on Twitter a screenshot of an email by Amnesty International stating that the human rights organization "is no longer able to consider Aleksei Navalny a prisoner of conscience given the fact that he advocated violence and discrimination and he has not retracted such statements."
Artemyev said: "Right, we will no longer use the phrase 'prisoner of conscience' in relation to him, since our legal and political department, having studied Navalny's statements in the mid-2000s, has come to the conclusion that they reach the level of hate speech. Nevertheless, our call for his immediate release remains valid, as he is being prosecuted solely for political reasons."
In January, Navalny returned to Moscow from Germany, where he was treated for alleged poisoning, and was arrested upon arrival at Sheremetyevo International Airport. Shortly after, a Moscow court rescinded Navalny's suspended sentence in the 2014 Yves Rocher fraud case over multiple probation breaches and replaced it with a 3.5-year prison term.
