Jailed Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny says a new probe has been launched against him, this time on a charge of terrorism, and that he will be tried on the "absurd" charge by a military court.
Navalny made the statement at a hearing on April 26 held by Moscow’s Basmanny district court where a decision is expected on what the parameters for the Kremlin critic will be to allow him to get acquainted with the case materials.
"They made absurd charges that threaten me with 30 years in prison," he said in a statement published on social media by his supporters.
"Investigator Vidyukov said yesterday that a terrorist case was brought out separately from this case and that I, while in prison, commit terrorist attacks," he added.
Navalny appeared at the hearing via video link from a prison in the Vladimir region. Just minutes after it started, Judge Yevgenia Nikolayeva ruled the hearing would be held behind closed doors.
"The attempt to hold this hearing behind closed doors is an attempt to illegally restrict me in getting acquainted with the case's materials and an attempt to do everything so that no one can learn about it," Navalny said, adding that the case's materials consisted of 196 volumes.
Navalny associate Ivan Zhdanov said earlier that investigators gave Navalny, a trained lawyer, just one day to get acquainted with 700 pages of materials for the case, which was launched in October against the corruption crusader and his associates after Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation was labeled as extremist.
The defendants were charged subsequently with organizing and financially supporting an extremist group.
Navalny said another case on a charge of propagating terrorism and Nazism was also launched against him in October over his self-exiled associates' statements on the Popular Politics YouTube channel. They criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government and condemned Moscow's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed earlier this month that Navalny's associates, along with Ukraine's secret services, were involved in the assassination of pro-Kremlin journalist and propagandist Vladlen Tatarsky in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg, in early April.