Amnesty International on Friday condemned a Russian court’s sentencing of three lawyers for aiding the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), calling the decision “shameful.”

Amnesty International’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia director Marie Struthers stated:

The prosecution and sentencing of Vadim Kobzev, Aleksei Liptser and Igor Sergunin is a shameful attempt to silence those who dared to defend Aleksei Navalny and make his voice heard even from behind bars. By targeting lawyers for merely doing their job, the Russian authorities are dismantling what remains of the right to legal defence and abusing what is a criminal justice system only in name.

The organization urged the Russian government to release the individuals and drop the charges against them, claiming that “[t]heir only ‘crime’ was standing up for justice and human rights.”

The lawyers were arrested in October 2023 for participating in the FBK, which the Russian government designated an “extremist organization” in 2021. The prosecution claimed that the lawyers relayed messages from Aleksei Navalny to other FBK members, thus enabling communication within the organization.

According to the Supreme Court’s Resolution of the Plenum of June 28, 2011 No. 11, the crime of participating in an extremist community is deemed complete the moment an individual joins such a community with the intent to commit extremist crimes. However, defense lawyer Andrei Grivtsov emphasized that the defendants did not commit any crimes of an extremist nature, stating: “The letters that they, according to the prosecution, allegedly passed on are not extremist in nature. At the trial stage, we engaged a linguistic specialist who confirmed that there was no extremism in the actions of the defendants and in the said letters.”

Grivtsov further argued that the criminal case relied on “inadmissible” evidence obtained through wiretapping meetings between the lawyer and a client convicted of a crime. He emphasized that Article 89(4) of the Criminal Executive Code of the Russian Federation explicitly prohibits the monitoring and recording of such meetings without any exceptions or allowances.

Navalny was a key opposition figure in Russia who was sentenced to nine years imprisonment in 2022 for fraud and contempt of court. He was also sentenced to 19 years in prison on extremism charges in 2023. Russia’s state prison service announced his death in February 2024 following his claims that prison officials were mistreating him.

The sentencing on Friday followed the condemnation of Russian practices by the International Bar Association, Lawyers for Lawyers, and Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada during the 57th session of the UN Human Rights Council last year. The groups denounced the widespread and escalating attacks on independent lawyers in Russia, including the arbitrary detention of the three lawyers who represented Alexei Navalny.