MOSCOW (AP) – Europe’s top human rights tribunal has ordered Russia to release jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, a sentence quickly overturned on Wednesday by Russian authorities determined to isolate the country’s most prominent enemy. Kremlin.
The decision of the European Court of Human Rights had demanded that Russia release Navalny immediately and warns that failure to do so would mark a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Russia’s justice minister dismissed the court’s lawsuit as “unfounded and illegal” and the foreign ministry denounced it as part of Western meddling in the country’s internal affairs.
Navalny, 44, an anti-corruption investigator and a leading critic of President Vladimir Putin, was arrested last month on his return from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nervous breakdown blamed on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation.
Earlier this month, a Moscow court sentenced Navalny to two years and eight months in prison for violating the terms of his parole while he was recovering in Germany. The sentence comes from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Navalny has rejected for fabrication and which the European court has declared illegal.
In Tuesday’s resolution, the ECHR set out rule 39 of its regulation and forced the Russian government to release Navalny, citing “the nature and extent of the risk to the applicant’s life.”
“This measure will take effect immediately,” the Strasbourg-based court said in a statement.
The court noted that Navalny has answered the argument of the Russian authorities that they had taken sufficient measures to safeguard his life and his well-being detained after the attack of a nervous agent.
Russian Justice Minister Konstantin Chuichenko rejected the court’s ruling as a “clear and crude interference” in Russia’s judicial system.
“This lawsuit is unfounded and illegal because it does not indicate any fact or legal rule that would allow the court to issue such a verdict,” Chuichenko said in a statement from Russian news agencies. “This requirement cannot be met because there is no legal reason for this person to be released into custody under Russian law. Aware of this, European judges have clearly made a political decision that could only exacerbate the restoration of constructive relations. with the institutions of the Council of Europe ”.
In the past, Moscow has complied with ECHR rulings granting compensation to Russian citizens who have challenged verdicts in Russian courts, but has never had to deal with the European court’s demand to release a convict.
As a reflection of its slow-fire irritation with the verdicts of the European court, Russia last year adopted a constitutional amendment declaring the priority of national legislation on international law. Russian authorities could now use this provision to overturn the ECHR ruling.
Mikhail Yemelyanov, deputy director of the legal affairs committee of the Kremlin-controlled lower house of parliament, noted the constitutional change and noted that it gives Russia the right to ignore the ECHR resolution, according to Interfax news agency.
But Navalny’s chief strategist, Leonid Volkov, argued that Russia’s membership in the Council of Europe obliges him to comply with the court’s ruling. He warned Facebook that the country risks losing its membership in the continent’s main human rights organization if it does not comply with the order.
Navalny’s arrest and imprisonment fueled a wave of protests across Russia. Authorities responded with blunt repression, which detained some 11,000 people, many of whom were fined or received prison sentences ranging from seven to fifteen days.
Russia has rejected Western criticism of Navalny’s arrest and crackdown on protests as meddling in its internal affairs.
In televised statements, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denounced the ECHR ruling as a blow to international law and that “it is part of a campaign to put pressure on our country and intervene in the internal affairs of our country “.
A court hearing on Navalny’s appeal for his sentence is scheduled for Saturday.
He has also faced lawsuits in a separate case on charges of defaming a World War II veteran. Navalny, who called the 94-year-old veteran and others who appear in a pro-Kremlin video “corrupt creatures,” “unconscious people,” and “traitors,” dismissed the allegations of slander and described them as part of official efforts to belittle him.
With his usual sardonic humor, Navalny compared his conditions in the Matrosskaya Tishina maximum security prison in Moscow to the isolation of a space traveler.
“People in uniforms who come to me say just a few formulaic phrases, you see a light indicating that there’s a video camera running in your chest: they look like androids,” he said in comments posted on Instagram. “And, like in a movie about space travel, the ship’s command center communicates with me. A voice from the intercom would say, “3-0-2, get ready for medical treatment.” And I replied, “Okay, it only takes me ten minutes to finish my tea.”