The Basmanny District Court of Moscow arrested in absentia the lawyer who defended Navalny, Alexander Fedulov. This was reported by a Mediazona correspondent from the courtroom.
25 minutes earlier, Basmanny Court Judge Natalya Dudar made a similar decision on arrest in absentia against Navalny’s other lawyer, Olga Mikhailova.
Olga Mikhailova and Alexander Fedulov are facing the same criminal case as three other former Navalny lawyers: Vadim Kobzev, Alexey Liptser and Igor Sergunin — they were accused of participating in an “extremist community” (Part 2 of Article 282.1 of the Criminal Code) due to the fact that that they passed on letters from the oppositionist from the colony to his comrades.
Kobzev, Liptser and Sergunin were detained in October last year and are now in pre-trial detention. Mikhailova said that at that time she was on vacation in Jordan and decided not to return to Russia. Fedulov also left Russia immediately after the arrest of his colleagues.
Lawyer Zyryanova noted at today’s meeting that Fedulov left Russia “for family reasons,” and in the case materials there is “no evidence that he was summoned to the investigator, but he did not appear.”
Fedulova’s defender also noted that in the case materials against both Olga Mikhailova and Alexander Fedulov there is an optical disc with a recording of Navalny’s confidential meeting with lawyers:
— Regarding ORM, that is, there are big questions regarding the legality of obtaining them. We believe that they were obtained in violation of the current legislation, since the case file contains a transcript, a transcript of a disk allegedly received from the Federal Penitentiary Service, from the colony where Alexander Fedulov’s client is serving his sentence. There is a recording of a meeting between lawyer Alexander Vladimirovich Fedulov and his client Alexey Navalny. Even from this transcript it is clear that they are discussing the defense in administrative cases. Nothing said there indicates any interaction regarding the extremist community. In my opinion, these are conjectures of the investigation. But the most important thing is that such a conversation could not get to the investigation within the framework of the operational investigation without violating attorney-client privilege, which is protected by law.
Lawyers Navalny in pre-trial detention center. Who are Vadim Kobzev, Alexey Liptser and Igor Sergunin