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Olga Mikhailova, a lawyer for jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny, has been charged in absentia with participation in an “extremist community,” allegedly created by Navalny in 2011 as the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF). Mikhailova reported the development on her Facebook page.
“The investigators are the same as in all of his cases. World-class masters at concocting insane nonsense and fictitious extremism. If you defend a person for 16 years – first, he ‘stole all of Kirovles,’ then he was a ‘swindler,’ ‘slandered a veteran’ and ‘insulted the judge and the prosecutor,’ then became a ‘swindler’ again and was recently declared an ‘extremist – you're an extremist yourself,” Mikhailova wrote.
She added “a special hello to the operatives and Russia Today reporters, who knew in advance about the unprecedented attack on all of Navalny's lawyers on October 13.”
“It was they who followed me and filmed me at the airport on October 10 as I was leaving for Jordan with a return ticket for October 18 (I’d purchased the week-long tour almost a month before). It was they who spread nasty hoaxes about Navalny, including him ‘slandering a veteran,’ and advertised Penal Colony No. 2 in Pokrov as the most comfortable penitentiary facility. Now they’ve spread libel about me as well, jumping at the opportunity of my brief departure,” the lawyer wrote.
She added she’d “never turned anyone in or ran away from anything” and had believed she would “stay in Russia and defend clients to the end.” “After my colleagues’ arrests on October 13, going back would mean going to jail. It makes no sense. Yes, I'm in a foreign country with my daughter right now. We have no home and tons of problems. I’ve left my near and dear in a place where I can't return. But I hope I’ll make more of a difference if I’m free, not in the penal colony, where we spent the whole summer participating in the absurd play called ‘Navalny's closed extremism trial’,” Mikhailova summarized.
As The Insider wrote earlier, Navalny's arrested lawyers – Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin, and Alexei Liptser – are currently in pre-trial detention in Moscow.
Kobzev, Sergunin, and Liptser have also been charged with participation in an “extremist community.” The investigation claims they passed information to Alexei Navalny, who’d been previously convicted for “extremism,” among other things.
Another lawyer of Alexei Navalny’s, Alexander Fedulov, left the country.