Alexeï Navalny was brought in a secure truck to the court responsible for trying him on Tuesday, February 2.

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Mikhail Tereshchenko / TASS / Sipa U / SIPA

“The most important thing in this trial is to scare a huge number of people.

We jail one to scare millions, ”said the Russian opponent of 44 years, Alexeï Navalny in court on Tuesday.

Risking several years in prison, the opponent considered that his case aimed to put an end to the growing protest movement of the Russians, before pronouncing an indictment against Vladimir Putin.

These lawsuits against the Kremlin critic, who survived poisoning in August, fueled new Russian-Western tensions and a protest movement in Russia.

In a packed court, the opponent adopted an attitude of mistrust, questioning the representatives of the prosecution and the penitentiary services, under the eyes of his wife Yulia and many foreign diplomats.

Putin described as "panty poisoner"

He denounced the thousands of arrests during demonstrations of support over the past two weekends, the largest opposition rallies in years.

“You cannot imprison the whole country!

“, He hammered from the glass cage reserved for defendants.

Then Alexei Navalny repeated that Vladimir Poutine was the one who had ordered the FSB, the security services, to kill him, by poisoning him in August in Siberia with the help of a nerve agent.

He “will go down in history as the panty poisoner,” he said.

At the end of December, Mr. Navalny claimed in a video that he had tricked an FSB agent over the phone by posing as an assistant to a senior official, the latter revealing that the poison had been applied to one of his underwear , stolen from his hotel during a trip to Siberia.

Breach of judicial review

The case examined by the court concerns a complaint from the prison services, which accuse him of having violated his judicial control by not pointing, being recovering in Germany, as he should have done in the context of a conviction suspended sentence dating back to 2014.

At the hearing Tuesday, the representatives of the prosecution reaffirmed that they wanted the three and a half years suspended prison sentence handed down in 2014 against Mr. Navalny to be transformed into a firm sentence.

The verdict at the time was denounced by the European Court of Human Rights.

This would be the first long prison sentence for Mr Navalny.

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  • Repression

  • Poisoning

  • World

  • Opposition

  • Russia

  • Vladimir Poutine

  • Alexei Navalny