Lawyer defending Navalny arrested
Attorney Ivan Pavlov, was detained after Russia’s Federal Security Service raided his Moscow hotel room at 6:40 a.m., his colleagues said.
MOSCOW — The lead lawyer defending Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in an extremism case that could outlaw Navalny’s opposition movement was arrested Friday, the latest instance of a remarkable escalation by the Kremlin in its long-running campaign to stifle dissent.
The lawyer, Ivan Pavlov, was detained after Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, raided his Moscow hotel room at 6:40 a.m., his colleagues said. He stood accused of disclosing details of an investigation unconnected to Navalny and faced three months of prison time. Pavlov’s colleagues said agents also searched their group’s St. Petersburg offices and broke down the apartment door of their technology manager.
Pavlov, one of Russia’s best-known human rights lawyers, has frequently represented high-profile defendants in cases involving the FSB, a successor to the KGB that wields enormous influence in Russia. His arrest shook Russia’s activist community.
“Ivan’s arrest is connected to his professional activity,” a group of lawyers said in an open letter Friday. “We believe that these actions by law enforcement are aimed exclusively at scaring Ivan and his colleagues in order to force them to reject an active position in defending their clients.”
Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, said he did not know the reasons for Pavlov’s arrest and could not comment on it. But he denied that the recent spate of pressure on opposition figures, activists, journalists and lawyers was all part of a single campaign against Kremlin critics.
“This is not all part of a unified trend,” Peskov told reporters. “These are different episodes and different cases.”
Pavlov runs a legal rights group called Team 29, named after the article of the Russian Constitution that guarantees the freedom of thought and speech. The group’s clients include Ivan Safronov, a former journalist accused of spying for NATO last year.
Team 29 said that Pavlov was being investigated for allegedly disclosing classified details of the Safronov case to the news media.
But the raids came four days after Pavlov took up the defense of Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition figure.
Navalny returned to Russia in January after recovering from a poisoning that Western officials believe was an assassination attempt by the Russian state. Since then, Russian authorities have entered a new phase of their yearslong campaign to repress the opposition, increasing their pressure on journalists and jailing or forcing into exile Navalny’s associates.
Navalny was sentenced toa2 ½-year prison term in February for violating parole for what rights groups say was a politically motivated conviction for embezzlement.
The opposition leader’s associates said Thursday they were shutting down their nationwide network of 40 regional offices.