Moscow City Court to hold closed trial on outlawing Navalny’s political movement as ‘extremist’

The Moscow City Court will review the lawsuit by the prosecutor’s office seeking to ban Alexey Navalny’s political and anti-corruption network as “extremist” behind closed doors. The court’s spokesperson Ulyana Solopova told the Russian state news agency TASS that this decision was made due to the fact that the case materials have been classified as “secret.”

Earlier, a lawyer from Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (the FBK) said that he wasn’t allowed to familiarize himself with the case materials at the court, allegedly due to the fact that they constitute a state secret. 

On April 16, the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office filed a lawsuit seeking to designate the FBK, the Citizens’ Rights Protection Foundation (both of which Russia’s Justice Ministry has already designated as “foreign agents”), and Navalny’s nationwide network of campaign offices as extremist organizations. The Moscow City Court registered the prosecutors’ lawsuit on April 19. The pre-trial proceedings are scheduled to begin on Monday, April 26.