MOSCOW (AP) – Moscow police launched a series of raids on Wednesday against apartments and offices of the family and associates of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny jailed, arresting his brother.
Places searched included Navalny’s apartment, where police arrested his brother, Oleg, and a rental apartment where Navalny’s wife, Yulia, lived.
The video on internet TV station Dozhd showed Yulia Navalny telling reporters from the window that police had not allowed her lawyer to enter the apartment.
The raids took place four days before the protests Navalny supporters have called for on Sunday.
Demonstrations demanding his release took place last Saturday in more than 100 cities across the country, a strong demonstration of growing anger against the Kremlin. Nearly 4,000 people were reportedly arrested in these protests.
Other places raided by police on Wednesday were the offices of the Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation and the studio that produces its videos and online broadcasts. Popular videos and broadcasts helped make Navalny the most prominent and persistent enemy of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
There were no immediate police comments about the searches. Navalny’s associates told social media that the searches were related to alleged violations of the epidemiological regulations of last week’s mass protest in Moscow.
But “the real reason for the searches of Navalny’s teams, family and office is the madness of Putin’s fear,” Navalny’s team said in a message.
Navalny’s challenge to Putin grew after he was arrested on January 17 on his return from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from nerve agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin.
Two days after his arrest, his organization published an extensive video report on a palatine coastal enclosure allegedly built for Putin. It has been seen tens of millions of times, causing further discontent.
Navalny, the Kremlin’s most important and enduring enemy, fell into a coma while aboard a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow on 20 August. He was transferred from a hospital in Siberia to a hospital in Berlin two days later. Laboratories in Germany, France, and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established that he was exposed to the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok.
Russian authorities have refused to open a full-fledged criminal investigation, alleging a lack of evidence indicating that Navalny was poisoned.
In December, Navalny posted the recording of a phone call that told a man he described as an alleged member of a group of Federal Security Service (FSB) agents who allegedly poisoned him at the August and then tried to cover it. up. The FSB dismissed the recording as false.
Navalny’s arrest and harsh police actions in the protests have led to widespread criticism from the West and calls for his release.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that a statement by the Group of Seven Foreign Ministers condemning his arrest constituted “serious interference” in Russia’s internal affairs.