The hearings on Oleg Navalny, the brother of jailed opposition figure Alexey Navalny, over the violation of public health guidelines during protests will begin on July 7, a spokeswoman for Moscow's Preobrazhensky District Court told Sputnik on Thursday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st July, 2021) The hearings on Oleg Navalny, the brother of jailed opposition figure Alexey Navalny, over the violation of public health guidelines during protests will begin on July 7, a spokeswoman for Moscow's Preobrazhensky District Court told Sputnik on Thursday.
The trial should have started this past Monday but had to be postponed due to Oleg Navalny not appearing in court. He did attend, however, the preliminary hearing that was held earlier on Thursday.
"A court hearing on the merits of the case is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. [13:30 GMT], July 7," Alisa Zakutnyaya said.
Unauthorized demonstrations took place in several Russian cities on January 23, January 31 and February 2 in support of Alexey Navalny, who was detained on his arrival in Moscow from Germany, where he was treated for alleged poisoning. The 45-year-old was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for parole breach in a financial fraud case. He is currently serving the prison sentence in a penal colony in the Vladimir Region of Russia.
According to investigators, the calls for protests by Oleg and several others of Navalny's supporters constituted a risk of the mass spread of COVID-19. The rest of the accused include Lyubov Sobol, the lawyer for the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK, labeled as a foreign agent and outlawed in Russia), Kira Yarmysh, Alexey Navalny's press secretary, as well as a member of the notorious punk protest band Pussy Riot, Maria Alyokhina, and several local lawmakers.
