Russian Court Rejects Opposition Politician Navalny's Appeal In Lawsuit Against Prison

Russian Court Rejects Opposition Politician Navalny's Appeal in Lawsuit Against Prison

The court of the Russian Vladimir Region, east of Moscow, rejected Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny's appeal against a lower court's decision over his complaint that a penal colony in which he was imprisoned prohibited his lawyers from bringing laptops and smartphones during visits, a Sputnik correspondent reported on Thursday

VLADIMIR (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 25th November, 2021) The court of the Russian Vladimir Region, east of Moscow, rejected Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny's appeal against a lower court's decision over his complaint that a penal colony in which he was imprisoned prohibited his lawyers from bringing laptops and smartphones during visits, a Sputnik correspondent reported on Thursday.

From April 18 to June 4, after he went on a hunger strike in another jail, Navalny was undergoing treatment in a hospital in Correctional Facility No. 3 in the Vladimir Region. He filed a lawsuit with the Oktyabrsky district court against the correctional facility, stating that his lawyers were banned from bringing laptops and smartphones while visiting him. The district court rejected the lawsuit.

"The decision of the Oktyabrsky district court to be left unchanged, the appeal of Alexey Anatolyevich Navalny to be dismissed," judge Yuri Samylov said.

A representative of Correctional Facility No. 3 said that the decision of the court was lawful and reasonable.

"The thorough investigation into the circumstances of the case has been made: video recordings of lawyers' security checks have been watched, which proved that they were handing over (laptops and smartphones at checkpoint) voluntarily. Nobody was forcibly demanding the means of communication. (We) consider the decision of the Oktyabrsky district court to be lawful and we ask (the judge) to dismiss the appeal," the representative said.

Navalny was charged with large-scale fraud and money laundering, and was given a suspended sentence of three and half years. In December 2020, he was allegedly poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent and was medically evacuated to Berlin. After Navalny returned from Berlin to Moscow in January 2021, he was arrested on charges of violating his parole conditions, which was later followed by a replacement of his suspended sentence with imprisonment in a penal colony.