VLADIMIR, February 1. /TASS/. The Petushinsky District Court in Russia’s Vladimir Region has turned down a lawsuit filed by blogger Alexey Navalny to fight his listing as a supporter of extremist ideas and a person prone to committing terrorism and extremism-related crimes, a court source told TASS on Tuesday.
"The court rejected Navalny’s lawsuit, the decision may be appealed," a source in the court’s secretariat said.
On October 7, a commission in the penal colony where Navalny is serving his sentence listed him as a supporter of extremist ideas and someone who is prone to committing terror and extremism-related crime. On the same day, he was removed from the list of inmates prone to escape attempts.
Officials from the Vladimir branch of the Federal Penitentiary Service told the court that being on the list meant that Navalny had to engage in individual preventive talks and be isolated from ties and conditions that negatively affected him, but it did not impact his daily routine at the colony. Navalny was put on the list because he had earlier committed administrative offenses, was a defendant in a criminal case and the founder of the FBK organization (recognized in Russia as a non-profit organization acting as a foreign agent), which was declared extremist by a court ruling. A correctional employee questioned by the court as a witness said in his October 1, 2021, report that Navalny had told other inmates about FBK’s activities.
Navalny, twice sentenced to probation, was put on a wanted list for repeatedly violating his probation over his suspended sentence in the Yves Rocher case. He was detained upon his return from Germany at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport on January 17, 2021. On February 2, a Moscow court sentenced him to an actual prison term.