(Reuters) – A Russian prosecutor on Monday asked for the jail term of a former staffer of Alexei Navalny to be increased, Navalny’s team said on Telegram, in the first major court hearing related to an ally of the opposition politician since his death last month.
Liliya Chanysheva, the former head of Navalny’s office in the central Bashkortostan region, and her former colleague, Rustem Mulyukov, were the first Navalny staffers to be convicted of national security charges after his organisation was deemed “extremist” in 2021.
Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic inside Russia, died aged 47 in an Artic penal colony on Feb. 16.
Chanysheva was handed a seven-and-a-half year sentence last year for participating in Navalny’s organisation, while Mulyukov received two-and-a-half years for similar charges.
A prosecutor in a cassation court in Samara on Monday demanded Chanysheva’s sentence be increased to ten years because she “provoked and incited Ufa residents” to protest in the streets, referring to Bashkortostan’s capital, independent outlet SOTA quoted the prosecutor as saying.
The cassation court returned Chanysheva and Mulyukov’s cases to Bashkortostan’s supreme court for a new examination, her lawyer wrote on Telegram.
At least two other Navalny staffers remain imprisoned in Russia: Vadim Ostanin, who ran Navalny’s branch in Barnaul and Ksenia Fadeyeva, a local lawmaker and former head of Navalny’s anti-corruption organisation in Tomsk.
Several of Navalny’s lawyers were also detained last year and are awaiting trial.
Navalny’s supporters at the time cast the jailings as an attempt to further isolate the imprisoned politician from the outside world and exert pressure on allies who remained in Russia. Many in Navalny’s core circle have fled and now work from abroad.
Members of his team have vowed to continue his opposition work and hold Putin responsible for what they call their leader’s murder. The Kremlin has angrily rejected claims it was involved in his death.
Navalny was buried last Friday in a funeral attended by thousands in Moscow.
(Reporting and writing by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
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