Jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny may face a new charge, this time of "disrupting" activities at the correctional colony where he is incarcerated, according to his lawyer Vadim Kobzev.
According to Kobzev, his client refused to enter a cell on April 17 after a "hobo" inmate who ignores personal hygiene was placed there.
"The smell in the cell was so disgusting that it was impossible to enter it," Kobzev tweeted on April 18, adding that a guard warned his client days earlier that a provocation had been prepared against him.
Kobzev said that after Navalny was forced to enter the cell, he tried to remove the cellmate identified as Tatarchenko but was stopped by the guards who assaulted him with blows to the abdomen.
"Then, the colony's administration, who were also present, gladly told Navalny that he will be now charged with a felony in accordance with Article 321 of the Russian Federation’s Criminal Code (disruption of a penitentiary's activities)," Kobzev said.
The penal colony has not commented publicly on Kobzev's assertions, but in the past has denied any allegation of mistreating inmates.
If convicted on the new charge, Navalny may face up to five more years in prison.
Kobzev said earlier that a prison guard had informed Navalny about a "provocation" involving a cellmate was being prepared against him and that Navalny’s defense team had informed Russian Ombudswoman Tatyana Moskalkova about the issue.
Navalny, who suffered a near-fatal poisoning in August 2020 that he blames on Russian security operatives acting at the behest of President Vladimir Putin, was arrested on January 17, 2021, and later handed a 2 1/2-year prison sentence for violating the terms of an earlier parole during of his convalescence abroad. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in Navalny's poisoning.
The original conviction is widely regarded as a trumped-up, politically motivated case.
In March last year, Navalny was handed a nine-year prison term on charges of contempt and embezzlement through fraud that he and his supporters have repeatedly rejected as politically motivated.