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Writers, scientists, artists, demand Navalny's release

2023-04-29 08:50:50, Kosova & Bota CNA
Writers, scientists, artists, demand Navalny's release
Alexei Navalny during a hearing in Moscow, February 2021

More than 130 internationally renowned writers, artists and scientists, including six Nobel Prize winners, have called on Russian authorities to immediately release opposition leader Alexei Navalny, stressing that he needs immediate and independent medical attention .

Among the signatories of the open letter, published on April 28, are: prominent Russian-American dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, writer JK Rowling, Nobel laureates in literature Orhan Pamuk, Herta Muller, Olga Tokarczuk, Svetlana Alexievich, Mario Vargas Llosa and JM Coetzee, cartoonist Art Spiegelman, playwright Tom Stoppard, actor Jean Reno, former footballer Eric Cantona, film director and composer Jeffrey Jacob Abrams and many others.

"We add our voice to the voice of 600 Russian doctors who are seeking urgent and immediate independent medical assistance. Another 100 Russian lawyers and 100 regional MPs demand that the torture against Navalny be stopped and that he be given medical aid again," the open letter says.

"Navalny is serving prison terms on charges that would never have been sustained under any independent legal system. We support the call of the German Government, the American authorities and the European Union, which demand his immediate release. It is in your power", they wrote.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision-making has rarely been influenced by such pressure from the foreign public during his more than two decades in power.

The letter was published two days after Navalny said he was being investigated again, this time on terrorism charges, and that he would be tried by a military court on "absurd" charges.

Navalny said another case was opened against him in October, on charges of propagandizing terrorism and Nazism, due to statements made by his associates in exile on the Popular Politics YouTube channel. They criticized Putin and his government and condemned Moscow's current unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Earlier this month, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) alleged that Navalny's associates, along with Ukrainian secret services, were involved in the killing of pro-Kremlin journalist and propagandist Vladlen Tatarsky in the city's second largest of Russia, St. Petersburg, at the beginning of April. The FSB has not provided any evidence linking Navalny's associates. His team rejected the FSB's claims.

The outspoken critic of the Kremlin has been in prison since February 2021, having been arrested a month earlier after returning from Germany to Russia, where he was being treated for near-fatal poisoning with a Novichok-type nerve agent, which he says it was ordered by Putin.

The Kremlin has denied any role in Navalny's poisoning, although only state actors have access to the military nerve agent.

Several other opposition leaders and associates of Navalny have been accused of founding an extremist group. Many of Navalny's close associates left Russia under pressure from the authorities./ REL





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