In Russia, on Friday, three lawyers who defended them were sentenced Alexei Navalny to several years in prison for taking messages from the late opposition leader from prison to the outside world.
The sentences were handed down in the midst of mass repressions Moscow's advance on Ukraine and how Russia has sought to punish Navalny's associates, even after his inexplicable death in an Arctic prison colony last February.
Vadim Kobzev, Aleksey Liptser and Igor Sergunin were found guilty of participating in an “extremist organization” by a court in the city of Petushki.
Kobzev, the most prominent member of Navalny's legal team, received five and a half years in prison, Lipzer received five years and Sergunin three and a half years.
Navalny's exiled widow, Yulia Navalnayasaid the lawyers were “political prisoners and should be released immediately.”
They were almost the only ones who visited Navalny in prison during his 19-year sentence.
Navalny, Putin's main political opponent, communicated with the world by relaying messages through his lawyers, which his team then posted on social media. Passing letters and messages through lawyers is a common practice in Russian prisons.
The men were convicted after a closed-door trial in the town about 72 miles east of Moscow, near the Pokrov prison where Navalny was held before he was transferred to a remote colony beyond the Arctic Circle, where he died.
“We are being tried for communicating Navalny's thoughts to other people,” Kobzev said in court last week.
The court said the men “used their status as lawyers while visiting the convicted Navalny … to ensure the regular transfer of information between members of the extremist community, including those wanted and hiding outside the Russian Federation, and Navalny.”
It said that this allowed Navalny to continue “planning preparations and creating conditions for the commission of crimes of an extremist nature.”
Navalny condemned the arrests of the lawyers in October 2023 as “outrageous” and part of a campaign to further isolate him in prison.
The sentences came days before four independent journalists accused of aiding Navalny are due back in court, facing up to six years in prison.
They also come four years after Navalny defiantly returned to Russia – on January 17, 2021 – after recovering from a poisoning that nearly killed him.
In his messages to the outside world, Navalny condemned the Kremlin's attack on Ukraine as “criminal” and called on supporters “not to give up.”
Just last week, Kobzev compared Moscow's current suppression of dissent to the mass repressions of the Stalin era.
“Eight years have passed… and the Petushka Court is again being tried for discrediting officials and state bodies,” he said in a speech published by Novaya Gazeta.
While Russia increasingly imprisons its own citizens for dissenting from the Kremlin, cases against the lawyers who defend these people are still rare.
The International Association of Lawyers UIA has warned that the trial raises questions about the future of the profession in Russia.
“The protection of the client, regardless of his political views and actions, is a cornerstone of the rule of law and a universal principle enshrined in international legal standards,” the organization said last month.
It said the lawsuit “sets a dangerous precedent” in “potentially deterring” lawyers from representing clients in sensitive cases.
International human rights groups and some Western countries condemned the sentence.
“Today marks another low point in the already appalling human rights situation in the Russian Federation,” Dutch Foreign Minister Kaspar Veldkamp said on social media on Friday.
Navalny's team accused the prison authorities of secretly videotaping Navalny's meetings – which were supposed to be confidential – with his lawyers and publishing the resulting footage on social media.
Last week, Navalnya said that Russia refused to remove her deceased from the list of terrorists and extremists.
She published a December letter from the Russian financial body “Rosfinmonitoring” to Navalny's mother, which says that the late opposition leader is still under investigation for money laundering and “terrorist financing.”
“Why is it to Putin? Obviously, not to prevent Aleksey from opening a bank account,” Navalnya said. “Putin is doing this to scare you.”