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The court hearing took place just over a week after a 44-year-old opposition leader, a constant headache for President Vladimir Putin, was sentenced to nearly three years in prison.
An anti-corruption fighter was sitting in a glass cage in the defendants’ courtroom in Moscow, dressed in a blue sports hooded sweater, a reporter from the AFP news agency reported.
The courthouse was surrounded by well-armed riot police.
The court’s press service and Lithuanian diplomatic sources previously indicated that Baltic diplomats went to a Moscow court on Friday to observe the opposition hearing.
Ms Navaln’s lawyer, Olga Michailova, urged Judge Vera Akimova to let the media into the courtroom, accused her of bias and asked to be excluded from leading the case.
“The judge has shown a clear reliance on the prosecutors, and the circumstances that show that the judges are having an impact were clarified at the last hearing,” Mikhailova said in a statement.
“Stop being embarrassed and take some courses to deepen your knowledge of the laws of the Russian Federation,” Navalnas said, supporting the lawyer’s request.
The Magistrates Court refused to accept the defense’s request to remove Judge Akimov during an external hearing at Moscow’s Babushkin District Court.
Navaln has been accused of calling people shameful and traitorous to the Kremlin in a video promoting constitutional reform last June.
Among those people was a 94-year-old World War II veteran who was videotaped in his hearing last Friday.
Navalnas currently faces up to two years in prison.
Last week, another Moscow court commuted the probation sentence imposed on Navalns in 2014 to an actual prison sentence and ordered him to serve two years and eight months.
The Federal Prison Service of Russia (FSIN) charged him with violating the terms of a probation sentence imposed in 2014 for failing to register twice a month in Germany, where he was being treated for his nerve-paralyzing substance Novičiok last summer.
The opposition blames Russian special services and President Putin for his poisoning, but the Russian authorities reject the accusations.
Navaln was arrested on January 17 after arriving at one of Moscow’s airports. The move sparked mass demonstrations in many Russian cities on two consecutive weekends, during which more than 10,000 people were detained by security forces. people. Hundreds of them have been sentenced to prison, and several of Navaln’s close associates face criminal charges and are under house arrest.
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