Opposition leader Alexei Navalny filed a lawsuit to be excluded from the list of Russian terrorists and extremists

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny filed a lawsuit with the Russian Justice to be excluded from the list of terrorists and extremists of the Federal Agency for Financial Supervision (Rosfinmonitoring), where he was included in late January.

The Meshchansky District Court in Moscow reported that it has received an “administrative complaint” filed by the political prisoner against Rosfinmonitoring, as reported by the Russian news agency TASS.

At the end of January, Russian authorities included Navalny and four of his collaborators on this list, which means that they cannot talk to the media, organize events, participate in elections and publish information on the Internet.

The Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), founded by the opposition activist and leader, was banned by the authorities in June 2021, after being declared an extremist organization by a Moscow court. The NGO was also listed as a foreign agent.

According to the current list, it also included one of Navalny's closest collaborators, Liubov Sobol, who decided to go into exile in the face of harassment by the authorities.

In this catalog consulted by the AFP agency there are thousands of people and organizations banned in Russia, such as the jihadists of the Islamic State or the Afghan Taliban. According to the Anti-Corruption Fund, at least nine other people linked to the movement were also added to the list. In mid-January, Navalny's two main collaborators, Ivan Jdanov and Leonid Volkov, who also went into exile, were already included.

This decision is part of a context of repression against critical voices in the country

Navalny was jailed in January 2021, when he returned to Moscow from Berlin, where he had been recovering from a poisoning that he and Western governments attributed to the security service of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The opposition leader was later jailed for violating the rules of conduct imposed in the parole file in the framework of the Yves Rocher case, for which he was sentenced in 2014 for corruption.

At the end of March, the Russian Supreme Court rejected an appeal lodged by the Russian opposition leader, whose defense called for annulling the decision on his admission to prison in favor of a conditional sentence.

“The court refused to transfer the appeal to the cassation body,” according to a Supreme Court source cited by the Interfax agency.

A similar decision was taken by the court in relation to a complaint by the opponent's defense against the court decision, according to which Navalny was placed in a remand centre after his return from Germany in February last year.

The opponent is currently serving a sentence of two and a half years in prison in a prison in Pokrov, 85 kilometers from Moscow.

Navalny was initially sentenced to three and a half years in prison for a case of fraud and money laundering related to the French firm Yves Rocher, during a trial that took place in 2014.

In another trial, Navalny was sentenced to nine years in prison after being convicted of large-scale fraud and offense to the court, which implies that he will remain in jail for this decade.

The new judgment against Navalni also includes a fine of 1.2 million rubles (about $12,000) for contempt of court.

His condemnation sparked a barrage of international criticism and new Western sanctions against Russia.

(With information from Europa Press and AFP)

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