Russian prison service asks opp. figure Navalny to return to avoid jail

Young journalists club

News ID: 49983
Publish Date: 12:28 - 29 December 2020
Tuesday, 29 December 2020_Russia’s prison service has called on opposition figure Alexei Navalny to return from Germany and abide by the terms of a suspended prison sentence he received five years ago or face its transformation into to a real jail term.

Russian prison service asks opp. figure Navalny to return to avoid jailThe Federal Prison Service (FSIN) said on Monday that Navalny was violating the terms of the suspended prison sentence and evading the supervision of Russia’s criminal inspection authority.

Citing an article by the British medical publication The Lancet published on December 22, it said Navalny had been discharged from Berlin’s Charite Hospital on September 20 and that all symptoms of his illness had disappeared by October 12.

“Therefore the convicted man is not fulfilling all of the obligations placed on him by the court, and is evading the supervision of the Criminal Inspectorate,” it said.

Navalny received a suspended three-and-a-half-year prison term over a theft case on December 30, 2014. His five-year probation period expires on Wednesday.

According to Article 190 of the Russian Penal Code, the FSIN can file a petition with the court to revoke the suspended sentence of a person and change it to a real prison term if he fails to fulfill the terms of his probation.

The prison service mentioned no deadline, but Navalny claimed that his lawyer had been informed that he had until 0900 on Tuesday to report at a Moscow office.

Navalny, 44, was airlifted to Berlin on August 22. He had collapsed during a domestic Russian flight on August 20 and had been taken to a local hospital. His aides claimed he had been poisoned after drinking a bottle of water at a hotel before the flight.

On September 2, Germany claimed without evidence that the Russian opposition figure had been poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent.

The Russian doctors who tested Navalny’s blood for poisoning before he was moved to Germany said at the time that the test results had come back negative.

 
Your Comment