Russia has handed lengthy prison sentences to three lawyers who had defended opposition leader Alexei Navalny, convicted for relaying messages from the imprisoned figure to the outside world. The verdicts against Igor Sergunin, Alexei Liptser, and Vadim Kobzev, sentenced to prison terms of three and a half to five and a half years, mark the latest in a series of legal actions by the Kremlin targeting dissent.
The case draws international concern, as rights groups fear that Russia is escalating its crackdown on legal representatives in addition to imprisoning activists and opposition figures like Navalny. The three lawyers were among the few visiting Navalny during his 19-year sentence. Their role in passing Navalny’s messages from his time in prison to the public sparked the charges.
Kobzev, the most prominent of the group, received a sentence of five and a half years, while Liptser and Sergunin were sentenced to five and three and a half years, respectively. The trio was convicted of participating in an “extremist organization” and accused of assisting Navalny’s communication from prison, a normal practice for legal representatives, which the Kremlin deems a threat.
The case has drawn widespread condemnation from the U.S., U.K., France, and Germany, who have accused Russia of undermining the rule of law and persecuting defense lawyers. The ruling against the lawyers follows a closed-door trial in Petushki, a town near the prison where Navalny was held before his transfer to a remote Arctic prison colony.
Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the late opposition leader, has called the lawyers “political prisoners” and demanded their immediate release. The sentences reflect the intensifying repression of legal opposition in Russia under the Kremlin’s rule.