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MOSCOW: Russia’s prison service gave Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny a last-minute ultimatum on Monday (December 28): Fly back from Germany immediately and report to a Moscow office early Tuesday morning , or you will be jailed if you return after that deadline.
Navalny, a leading critic of President Vladimir Putin, was flown to Germany for treatment in August after collapsing from a plane in what Germany and other Western nations say was an attempt to assassinate him with a Novichok nerve agent.
Russia has said it has seen no evidence that he was poisoned and has denied any involvement in the incident.
The Federal Prison Service (FSIN) on Monday accused Navalny of violating the terms of a suspended prison sentence still serving for a sentence dating back to 2014, and of evading the supervision of Russia’s criminal inspection authority.
Citing an article in the British medical journal The Lancet about his treatment, he said that Navalny had been released from the hospital in Berlin on September 20 and that all symptoms of what he called his illness had disappeared by October 12.
“Therefore, the convicted person is not complying with all the obligations imposed by the court and is avoiding the supervision of the Criminal Inspection,” he said.
Navalny is serving a suspended prison sentence of three and a half years for a robbery case that he says was politically motivated. Your trial period expires on December 30.
The prison service said in a statement late Monday that it had summoned Navalny to appear before the inspection authority and that his suspended sentence could be changed to an actual jail term if it was proven that his alleged violations of the terms of the the suspended sentence were true. .
The prison service did not mention a deadline, but Navalny posted a screenshot of a message to his lawyer saying he had until 0900 on Tuesday to return and report to a Moscow office.
His spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said on Twitter that it was impossible for Navalny to return in time, that he was still convalescing from his poisoning and accused the prison service of acting on the orders of the Kremlin.
“There is no way I can appear tomorrow at the Moscow Criminal Inspection. But does the FSIN really care about common sense? They were given an order, they are carrying it out,” he wrote.
The Kremlin has said that Navalny is free to return to Russia at any time like any other Russian citizen.
