Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny went on trial Monday on new charges of extremism that could keep him behind bars for decades. The trial opened at a maximum security penal colony in Melekhovo, 150 miles east of Moscow, where Navalny, 47, is serving a nine-year sentence for fraud and contempt of court—charges he says are politically motivated. Soon after it began, the judge ruled to close the trial despite Navalny's call to keep it open, per the AP. Wearing his prison garb, Navalny looked gaunt at the session but spoke emphatically about the weakness of the state's case and gestured energetically.
“The investigators, the prosecutors and the authorities in general don’t want the public to know about the trial,” said Navalny, who previously exposed official corruption and organized major anti-Kremlin protests. He was arrested in January 2021 upon returning to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin. Navalny has said the new extremism charges, which he rejected as “absurd,” could keep him in prison for another 30 years. He said an investigator told him that he would also face a separate military trial on terrorism charges that could potentially carry a life sentence.
Monday's trial came amid a sweeping Russian crackdown on dissent amid the fighting in Ukraine, which Navalny has harshly criticized. The Moscow City Court, which opened the hearing at Penal Colony No. 6, didn’t allow reporters in the courtroom, and they watched the proceedings via video feed from a separate building. Navalny's parents also were denied access to the court and followed the hearing remotely. Navalny has spent months in a tiny one-person cell, also called a “punishment cell,” for purported disciplinary violations such as an alleged failure to properly button his prison clothes, properly introduce himself to a guard, or to wash his face at a specified time. (A documentary about Navalny recently won an Oscar.)
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