Alexey Navalny’s flight risk status remains in force after Moscow City Court rejects appeal
The Moscow City Court has sided with the court of first instance and upheld a ruling in favor of deeming imprisoned opposition politician Alexey Navalny as a flight risk.
Spokespeople for the Moscow City Court confirmed to Meduza on Tuesday, August 17, that the court rejected Navalny’s appeal against the initial ruling, meaning that the court of first instance’s decision on his flight risk status has come into legal force.
In June, Moscow’s Preobrazhensky District Court threw out a lawsuit filed by Navalny’s lawyers against the administration of the Matrosskaya Tishina remand prison. The claim challenged the remand prison commission’s decision to preventatively register the opposition politician as “liable to escape,” when he was in pre-trial custody in Moscow in February 2021.
The prison commission allegedly listed Navalny as a flight risk due to the fact that he publicly spoke “about his intentions to escape” on two separate occasions. Navalny maintains that these statements were jokes.
Following his transfer to a prison colony in the city of Pokrov (Vladimir region) in March, Navalny complained of “torture by insomnia” — because he is considered a liable to escape, the prison staff wake him up every hour throughout the night as they conduct checks, he said. Navalny maintains that there isn’t a single reason why he should be considered liable to escape from prison and argues that the nighttime checks violate his right to uninterrupted sleep.
