Navalny Loses Appeal Against Penitentiary's Decision To Label Him 'Inclined To Commit Terrorism'

Outspoken Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny on May 27.

Jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny has lost an appeal against a decision by penitentiary officials to label him as "a person inclined to commit crimes of a terrorist or extremist nature."

A court in the Vladimir region, some 100 kilometers east of Moscow, rejected Navalny’s appeal on June 7.

After his arrest in January 2021, the outspoken Kremlin critic was labeled as a person "inclined to escape incarceration," which imposed strict controls on him. In October, that label was replaced by the "terrorist" one.

Navalny was arrested upon his return to Moscow from Germany, where he was treated for a poison attack in Siberia in 2020 with what European labs defined as a Soviet-style nerve agent.

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He was then handed a two-and-a-half year prison sentence for violating the terms of an earlier parole during of his convalescence abroad. The original conviction is widely regarded as a trumped-up, politically motivated case.

In March, Navalny was sentenced in another case to nine years in prison on embezzlement and contempt charges that he and his supporters have repeatedly rejected as politically motivated.

Last week, Navalny said new charges for "creating an extremist group" in connection with his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and groups associated with it had been filed against him.

FBK and other groups associated with Navalny, as well as his political movement, were declared "extremist organizations" by Russian authorities in June 2021 and disbanded.

Several of Navalny's associates have already been charged with the same offense.

Based on reporting by Interfax and TASS