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A new criminal case has been initiated against politician Alexei Navalny under Article 282 of Russia’s Criminal Code (“Organizing an extremist community”), Navalny's team writes on his Twitter account.
“As it turns out, I created an extremist group to incite hatred for public officials and oligarchs. When I was put in jail, I dared to show my dissatisfaction (indeed, why would I?) and called for public protests. For that, they’ll give me another prison term of up to 15 years,” the Tweet says on behalf of Navalny.
On March 22, the court sentenced Navalny to nine years in a maximum-security prison in the case of “fraud and contempt of court”. “Could it be that Putin doesn’t hate me but secretly admires me instead? So he wants me to stay safely hidden in an underground bunker, like himself, guarded by his trusted men,” Navalny writes in his account. “What other explanation could there be, considering that not eight days have passed since my sentence of nine years in a supermax came into effect and the investigator already comes running with an indictment in a new case?”
The politician has not disclosed any details of the new case.
Alexei Navalny is currently serving his sentence under the Yves Rocher case in penal colony No. 2 in Pokrov, Vladimir Region. He is to be transferred to maximum-security colony IK-6 in Melekhovo, also in Vladimir Region. As Navalny says, referring to his sources among its inmates, the plan is to put him in a “prison inside a prison”.