MOSCOW – Russia’s prison service on Monday gave Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny a last-minute ultimatum: fly back from Germany immediately and report to a Moscow office on Tuesday morning, or be arrested if return after that time.
Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin’s main critics, was flown to Germany for treatment in August after crashing into a plane in what Germany and other Western countries say was an attempt to murder him with a Novichok nervous agent .
Russia said it saw no evidence that he was poisoned and denied any involvement in the incident.
The Federal Prison Service (FSIN) accused Navalny on Monday of violating the terms of a suspended sentence that he is still serving because of a 2014 sentence and evading the supervision of Russia’s criminal inspection authority.
Citing an article in the British medical publication The Lancet about his treatment, the newspaper said Navalny was discharged from the hospital in Berlin on September 20 and that all symptoms of what he called his illness disappeared on October 12.
“Therefore, the convicted person is not fulfilling all the obligations imposed on him by the court and is evading the inspection of the Criminal Inspectorate,” he said.
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Navalny is serving a suspended sentence of three and a half years in prison for a case of theft he says is politically motivated. Your trial period expires on December 30th.
The prison service said in a statement late on Monday that it summoned Navalny to report to the inspection authority and that his suspended sentence could be changed to a real sentence if his suspicions of violations of the terms of the suspended sentence are proven. .
The prison service did not mention any deadlines, but Navalny posted a screenshot of a message to his lawyer, saying he had until 9am on Tuesday to return and show up at an office in Moscow.
His spokesman, Kira Yarmysh, said on Twitter that it was impossible for Navalny to return in time, that he was still convalescing after the poisoning, and accused the prison service of acting on the Kremlin’s orders.
“There is no way for him to appear at the Moscow Criminal Inspectorate tomorrow. But does the FSIN really care about common sense? They have been given an order, they are carrying it out,” she wrote.
The Kremlin said that Navalny is free to return to Russia at any time, like any other Russian citizen.