Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny walks with protesters during a rally in Moscow, Russia, on Saturday, February 29, 2019. The rally marks five years since the assassination of politician Boris Nemtsov.
Andrey Rudakov | Bloomberg via Getty Images
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was arrested at a Moscow airport after returning from Germany on Sunday, the prison service reported.
The prison service said he was detained for various breaches of parole and the conditions of a suspended prison sentence and would remain in custody until a court makes a decision on his case.
Navalny, who is President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent and determined enemy, had spent the previous five months in Germany recovering from a nervous breakdown he blamed on the Kremlin. Navalny decided to leave Berlin of his own free will and did not suffer any apparent pressure to leave Germany.
The prison service made the announcement after Navalny’s flight landed in the Russian capital, albeit at a different airport than scheduled. It was a possible attempt to mock journalists and supporters who wanted to witness Navalny’s return.
Russia’s prison service last week issued an arrest warrant, saying it had breached the terms of the suspended sentence it received in a 2014 conviction for embezzlement. The prison service has asked a Moscow court to turn Navalny’s 3-and-a-half-year suspended sentence into a real one.
After tackling Moscow’s flight to Berlin on Sunday, Navalny said of the possibility of arrest: “It’s impossible; I’m an innocent man.”
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied a role in the intoxication of the opposition leader.
Navalny’s fans and reporters had arrived at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport, where the plane was scheduled to land, but ended up touching Sheremetyevo airport, about 40 kilometers away. There was no immediate explanation for the flight diversion.
The OVD-Info group, which monitors political arrests, said at least 37 people were arrested at Vnukovo airport, although their affiliations were not immediately clear.
Vnukovo banned journalists from working inside the terminal, saying in a statement last week that the move was called epidemiological concerns. The airport also blocked access to the international arrivals area.
Police detention vehicles stopped in front of the terminal on Sunday.
The independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta and opposition social media reported on Sunday that several Navalny fans in St. Petersburg had been withdrawn from trains bound for Moscow or that they had been denied boarding on flights late Saturday and Sunday. principles, including the coordinator of its staff for the Russian region. second largest city.
Navalny 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 a Novichok nerve agent from the Soviet era.
Russian authorities insisted that doctors who treated Navalny in Siberia before transferring him to Germany found no trace of poison and have challenged German officials to provide evidence of his poisoning. They refused to open a full-fledged criminal investigation, alleging a lack of evidence indicating that Navalny was poisoned.
Last month, Navalny posted the recording of a phone call he said he made to a man he described as an alleged member of a group of Federal Security Service (FSB) agents, who allegedly poisoned in August and then tried to cover it. up. The FSB dismissed the recording as false.
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