Targeting a close Russian opposition to Navalny as part of a criminal investigation

Moscow: On Friday, charges were brought against a Russian opposition close to Alexei Navalny as part of a criminal investigation that was opened against him after he visited an alleged agent of the Federal Security Service, whom the Kremlin opponent accused of participating in its poisoning.

An investigation was opened on charges of “trespassing” and “threatening” the agent against Lyubov Sobol, who visited him on Monday, and the agent accused Navalny of defrauding him in a phone call to pressure him to confess to the assassination attempt, Ivan tweeted. Zhdanov, director of the anti-corruption organization he founded. Russian galleries.

After Sobol was first summoned as a witness, charges were brought against her after being questioned and placed in pretrial detention for 48 hours, Zhdanov confirmed overnight.

“Lyubov Sobol has become an official suspect as part of this investigation,” he wrote on Twitter. “His status has changed.”

Sobol’s lawyer, Vladimir Voronin, confirmed the information to France Press, but did not add details.

Both charges carry a maximum penalty of two years in prison.

Russian police arrested Sobol on Friday morning at her home in Moscow, which was also searched, and then transferred her to the Russian Commission of Inquiry, a body responsible for major criminal investigations.

“My house has never been raided before, but there is always a first time for everything,” Sobol said in a video he filmed when his apartment door was knocked on.

A tape recorded by a security camera posted outside the apartment shows men in helmets and masks standing in front of the door, before taping the camera lens to deactivate it.

On Monday, Navalny published a recording of a telephone conversation with a member of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), Konstantin Kudryavtsev, in which he defrauded him to make him admit that the security service was indeed behind the poisoning and He made believe he was talking to a security officer.

The Russian Federal Security Forces condemned the Russian Federation for “fraud” but never denied that the interlocutor was actually an agent or a member of the team responsible for tracking down opponents.

Russian President Vladimir Putin previously acknowledged that Navalny was under surveillance, after a media report revealed the names and photos of chemical weapons experts from Russia’s Federal Security Service who had been monitoring Navalny for years, including Kudriavtsev.

Three European laboratories concluded that Navalny had been poisoned with the nerve gas that Novichok developed for military purposes in the Soviet era.

Sobol, a 33-year-old lawyer and prominent opposition activist close to Navalny, reported that on Monday she went to the building where the alleged client was staying.

His address was published on the Internet, and many journalists came to the scene. Riot police were deployed before Sobol was arrested.

According to his lawyer, the complaint against Sobol was filed by Kudryavtsev’s wife, Galina Sobotina.

Navalny claims he was poisoned by order of the Kremlin on August 20.

For its part, Moscow confirms that there is no indication that the exposures were subject to poisoning, despite his illness on board a plane in Siberia, then falling into a coma, and despite the results of European laboratories that demonstrated that he was poisoned.

Moscow condemned this novel, calling it a Western conspiracy, and questioned the healthy lifestyle of the opposition.

Recalling that an investigation into his case has not yet been opened in Russia, Navalny denounced the investigations that were opened against Sobol, which did nothing more than “knock on the door of a murderer.”