Amnesty accused of folding to Kremlin

Amnesty International has stripped Alexei Navalny of his status as a prisoner of conscience after what his spokesman called an ‘‘orchestrated campaign’’ to discredit him over hate speech a decade ago.

The human rights group recognised the Russian opposition leader as a prisoner of conscience last month after his arrest but said it had revised its decision ‘‘in light of new information’’ about comments he made on migrants from Central Asia. It also said that he had urged violence but gave no examples.

Amnesty defines a prisoner of conscience as someone who has not used or advocated violence but is imprisoned because of their political or religious beliefs. Alexander

Artemev, a spokesman for Amnesty in Moscow, said that it had taken the decision after being ‘‘bombarded’’ with complaints. ‘‘We had too many requests; we couldn’t ignore them,’’ he told the BBC.

An Amnesty employee, speaking anonymously to Russia’s Mediazona website, suggested that the campaign may have been co-ordinated by ‘‘people in different countries at Russia Today ’’, the Kremlin-funded media outlet.

Navalny began his political career as a member of Yabloko, a liberal party, but became a nationalist activist in the mid2000s. In 2006 he co-founded Narod, a nationalist-democratic movement, and attended the Russian march, an annual rally in Moscow of nationalist and ultra-right groups. He said his actions had been an attempt to encourage a wider debate about mass immigration to Russia from mainly Muslim former Soviet states such as Tajikistan.

Although he condemned farright violence, he caused controversy with a series of online videos called ‘‘Become a Nationalist’’. In one, he compared darkskinned criminals from the north Caucasus region to cockroaches and said that homeowners should be able to use lethal force to defend their homes.