West hits out after Navalny is detained on return home
Russian court remands Putin critic who survived Novichok poisoning
A JUDGE has ordered Alexei Navalny to be remanded in custody for 30 days amid a mounting international outcry over his detention.
The Russian opposition leader’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh confirmed the news on Twitter.
The ruling concluded an hours-long court hearing set up at a police precinct where the politician was held since his arrest at a Moscow Airport.
Mr Navalny flew to Russia from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from nerve agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin.
He was detained at passport control at Sheremetyevo Airport after flying in on Sunday evening from Berlin, where he was treated following the poisoning in August.
Mr Navalny’s arrest prompted a wave of criticism from US and European officials, adding to existing tension between Russia and West.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told Russia to immediately release the Kremlin critic.
He tweeted: “It is appalling that Alexey Navalny, the victim of a despicable crime, has been detained by Russian authorities. He must be immediately released.
“Rather than persecuting Mr Navalny, Russia should explain how a chemical weapon came to be used on Russian soil.”
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he was “deeply troubled” by Mr Navalny’s arrest, while adding a veiled criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Confident political leaders do not fear competing voices, nor see the need to commit violence against or wrongfully detain, political opponents,” he said.
Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said that Mr Navalny’s arrest was “unjustifiable and an insult to the Russian people”.
The politician’s allies said he was being held at a police precinct outside Moscow and has been refused access to his lawyer.
The court hearing into whether Mr Navalny should remain in custody was hastily set up at the precinct itself, and the politician’s lawyers said they were notified minutes before.
“It is impossible what is happening over here,” Mr Navalny said in video from the improvised court room, posted on his page in the messaging app Telegram.
“It is lawlessness of the highest degree.”
The judge ordered that Mr Navalny be remanded in custody until February 15, Ms Yarmysh said on Twitter.
Mr Navalny’s lawyer Vadim Kobzev told the Interfax news agency that the defence plans to appeal against the ruling.
Mr Navalny’s detention was widely expected because Russia’s prisons service said he had violated probation terms from a suspended sentence on a 2014 money-laundering conviction.
The service said it would seek to have Mr Navalny serve his three-and-a-half-year sentence.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the stream of Western reactions to Navalny’s arrest reflects an attempt “to divert attention from the crisis of the Western model of development”.
“Navalny’s case has received a foreign policy dimension artificially and without any foundation,” Mr Lavrov said, arguing that his detention was a prerogative of Russian law enforcement agencies that explained their action. “It’s a matter of observing the law,” he added.
Mr Navalny fell into a coma while aboard a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow on August 20. He was transferred from a hospital in Siberia to a Berlin hospital two days later.