The diplomatic car drove up to the court, where a hearing on the case of the blogger Alexei Navalny’s libel against the veteran of the Great Patriotic War will take place. This was reported by the Izvestia correspondent on Friday, February 5.
The car tried to enter the court, but could not do so and later left.
Soon a representative of the British Embassy was noticed near the court, but he refused to talk to journalists.
In the morning, the police and Rosgvardia come to the court, the road patrol service is on duty. It is noted that Navalny was taken to court at about 6 am.
The case was initiated because of Navalny’s comments on the video in which veteran Ignat Artemenko spoke in support of changes to the Russian Constitution. The blogger left comments under the video that were deliberately false and denigrated the honor and dignity of the veteran.
Navalny is charged with libel (part 2 of article 128.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). If proven guilty, he could be fined or compulsory labor.
On February 2, Moscow’s Simonovsky Court ruled to cancel Navalny’s suspended sentence in the Yves Rocher case and replace him with 3.5 years in a general regime colony. Taking into account the time spent under house arrest, in fact, he will stay in the colony for two years and eight months. The reason for replacing the suspended sentence with a real one was multiple violations of the probationary period.
In addition, about 20 employees of the embassies of different countries came to the Moscow City Court, where the field session of the Simonovsky District Court in the Navalny case took place.
Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov recalled that foreign diplomats should not interfere in the internal affairs of Russia. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova noted that the presence of Western diplomats at the Navalny trial could be a form of pressure on the court.
At the same time, on February 4, the diplomats did not visit the Timiryazevsky court in Moscow, which was considering an administrative offense case against French citizen Cyril Daniel for participating in an unauthorized action in the capital.
The foreigner was arrested for seven days and served his sentence in a special detention center for persons arrested in administrative order.