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How Alexey Navalny and his campaign manager landed in jail again for another 20 days

Source: Meduza
Maxim Shipenkov / EPA / Scanpix / LETA

On October 2, Moscow’s Simonovsky District Court heard the latest case against opposition politician Alexey Navalny, convicting him of repeatedly inciting mass public demonstrations without permits from local officials. This time, prosecutors accused Navalny of trying to stage an unsanctioned rally in Nizhny Novgorod, where Navalny’s campaign says it was initially told it could hold a demonstration, before city authorities formally refused to issue a permit. Navalny was ultimately sentenced to 20 days in jail for calling on his supporters to come to the rally, even though his team never got a permit. Shortly after Navalny’s sentence was announced, another court in Moscow ruled that Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s campaign manager, will also spend 20 days in jail for the same offense. In response, Volkov announced a hunger strike.

At about 3 p.m., Moscow time (when the trial was scheduled to begin), at least 60 people assembled outside the courthouse. About two thirds of the people in the crowd were Navalny’s supporters, most of whom appeared to be no older than 18. Straightening their bright red “NAVALNY” campaign pins, they met up and bragged about how they’d been detained at past rallies, arguing about who specifically in the Kremlin would “assist” the Simonovsky District Court with reaching a verdict in Navalny’s case. A few of them also debated the prospects of a presidential bid by TV journalist and professional socialite Ksenia Sobchak. Most of the people in the crowd said they were sure the court would take into account the number of Navalny’s supporters who came to the courthouse, and said they were confident this could help soften the verdict.

At about 3:10 p.m., Navalny’s campaign manager, Leonid Volkov, came to the courthouse, where he was also being tried for inciting an unsanctioned demonstration in Nizhny Novgorod. Fifteen minutes later, Navalny arrived, hurrying into the courtroom for the beginning of his hearing. Volkov waited in the hallway for the start of his own trial, which was later moved to a court in the Savelovsky District, where he lives.

Evgeny Feldman for Navalny’s campaign

Navalny’s hearing got underway without hardly any delay. The judge was Khyzyr Mussakayev, who’s twice presided over cases against Volkov: once after the March 26 protests and again after Navalny’s “Campaign Saturday” in August. In both those trials, Mussakayev sided with the prosecution. On October 2, however, the judge seemed to be in good spirits, even showing a little sympathy when speaking to Navalny.

All the journalists come to cover the trial couldn’t fit in the courtroom at first. After five minutes, Navalny stepped out into the hallway. “Thanks, everybody. We’re acquitted,” he said smiling, admitting only a couple of minutes later that he was just kidding: the judge had only called a brief recess to get acquainted with the case materials.

When the court was back in session, Navalny’s lawyers, Olga Mikhailova and Vadim Kobzev, immediately asked the judge to rule that their client’s detention on September 29 had been illegal. Mikhailova and Kobzev pointed out that Navalny was held in police custody for 11 hours, though administrative detentions aren’t supposed to exceed three hours.

“In 11 hours at the police station, Navalny was not provided with food or water, which is a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Inhumane Treatment,” Mikhailova argued.

Navalny’s lawyers also told the court that police officers violated their client’s constitutional rights to freedom and personal inviolability, and prevented him from staging his campaign rally in Nizhny Novgorod. The case against Navalny had a clear political motive, they insisted.

When he spoke, Navalny argued that local officials in Nizhny Novgorod had illegally denied his campaign a demonstration permit. The mayor’s office, he said, rejected the initially requested venue, and offered several alternative locations. When Navalny’s campaign agreed to stage the rally at one of these alternative venues, however, the city reportedly said it was no longer available, claiming that another public event was scheduled to take place there at the same time.

“The Nizhny Novgorod Mayor’s office isn’t alone here. We are rejected illegally [in other cities]. Today, we got the latest such rejection from Perm. I’ll quote it word-for-word: because Navalny is making positive promises about the future. And officials in St. Petersburg simply refuse to issue a permit, without offering any legal grounds… The time has come to tell you decisively: no! And it’s time to tell the Kremlin that it’s got plenty else [to worry about],” Navalny said, asking the judge to throw out the case against him.

In response, Judge Mussakayev started reading out in monotone the police report against Navalny, which accused the opposition politician of holding rallies “with the aim of forming a positive image of himself.” The case file included screenshots recorded from Navalny’s website. Mussakayev then started reading excerpts from the screenshots, floundering as he repeated Navalny’s words about the government: “a crook,” “a United Russia thief,” “joy is the burning of bureaucratic carcasses.”

The judge also watched a video Navalny uploaded to Instagram while in police custody on September 29. Navalny showed the judge the video directly from his mobile phone, arguing that it couldn’t have served as grounds for his detention, given that he recorded it after police had already detained him. Then the court watched a video Navalny uploaded to YouTube, where he called on supporters to attend his campaign rally in Nizhny Novgorod. The video had been recorded several days earlier, when the campaign still expected the city to issue a demonstration permit, Navalny said.

Evgeny Feldman for Navalny’s campaign

At about 5:30 p.m., Mussakayev withdrew to consider his verdict — a process that would last 2.5 hours, during which time Navalny’s supporters waited around in the hallway, taking bets on the ruling to come. Only a few people believed that Navalny would actually be jailed. Navalny shared the general skepticism about another arrest, telling journalists around 8 p.m., “I’m almost certain that I’ll be fined, so everybody’s going to be disappointed: there won’t be some cool photograph where I’m being led away by police.” When Mussakayev started reading the verdict, Navalny looked just as calm as before, listening carefully to the judge and smiling at various nuances in his words, looking confident that the ruling would be what he expected.

Mussakayev rejected Navalny’s defense, finding that the oppositionist knew the rally in Nizhny Novgorod had no city permit and nevertheless repeatedly called on his supporters to attend, using his website and accounts on YouTube and Instagram. Separately, the judge pointed out that Navalny’s campaign initially planned to stage its rally at Gorky Square in Nizhny Novgorod, but the city rejected the permit request because the area is home to several “socially significant objects,” including multiple pharmacies and a weight loss medical center. Navalny laughed out loud, when Mussakayev described the “Doctor Bormental” diet clinic’s local significance.

The politician continued smiling as Mussakayev said he sees no illegality in the actions of Nizhny Novgorod’s mayor and police force, while Navalny’s guilt, he argued, had been demonstrated fully. In the end, the judge sentenced him to 20 days in jail. By the time Navalny goes free later in the month, he will have spent 60 days in jail since announcing his presidential bid last December.

“Your honor, I won’t be taking you to Russia’s glorious future,” Navalny then told the judge, calling the ruling “a birthday gift to Putin” and encouraging his supporters to keep attending his rallies, including a demonstration in St. Petersburg on October 7 (Putin’s 65th birthday), for which his campaign still doesn’t have a permit.

“Old Man Putin is so afraid of our rallies in the regions that he’s decided to treat himself to a small gift ahead of his birthday. Things are calmer this way,” Navalny managed to say in a message he posted on Twitter and in a video shared online.

Around 9 p.m., after the police took Navalny to a special detention center, his young supporters started dispersing, telling each other that they’d absolutely keep coming to protests. One of them, a man who looked about 18, expressed what seemed to be a common opinion: “I don’t think anybody here is afraid of criminal prosecution,” he said.

About 90 minutes later, Leonid Volkov’s case wrapped up, ending in an identical verdict and sentence. Volkov declared a hunger strike immediately afterwards.

Russian text by Pavel Merzlikin, translation by Kevin Rothrock

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