Russia jails lawyers who acted for late opposition leader Alexei Navalny

Three lawyers of former Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny have been sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison on charges of being part of an “extremist organization”.

Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser were arrested in October 2023 as the Russian authorities pressured the dissident who was a prisoner of the Kremlin, who died suddenly last February in an Arctic prison.

They were tried behind closed doors in Petushki, a town east of Moscow, and accused of “using their position” to send messages between Navalny and his associates.

Navalny criticized the case as similar to the Soviet era, and showed “the state of law and order in Russia”.

Igor Sergunin was the only one of the three to plead guilty, according to independent reports, and was given a minimum sentence of three and a half years.

Alexei Liptser was sentenced to five years in prison and Vadim Kobzev was given five and a half years.

Kobzev’s lawyer, Andrei Grivtsov, said the evidence against him was illegal.

“They are not allowed to listen to meetings between a lawyer and a client in prison – there is a specific ban,” he told BBC Russian.

The three lawyers were tried near the prison in Pokrov, where Navalny was sent when he returned to Russia in January 2021, after surviving a nervous attack that he blamed on Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin denied the allegations and Navalny remained in a Russian penal colony until his death, north of the Arctic Circle and 1,900km (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow.

His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, blamed Putin for his death, which the authorities ruled a “sudden death”.