MOSCOW (AP) – Europe’s top human rights court has ordered Russia to release opposition leader Alexei Navalny, a decision quickly rejected on Wednesday by Russian officials seeking to isolate the Kremlin’s most important enemy.
The European Court of Human Rights decision demanded that Russia release Navalny immediately and warned that if it did not do so, it would be a violation of the European human rights convention.
The Russian Minister of Justice considered the court’s request “unfounded and illegal” and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced it as part of the Western interference in the country’s internal affairs.
Navalny, 44, anti-corruption investigator and most prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, was arrested last month on his return from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nervous agent poisoning he attributes to the Kremlin. Russian authorities rejected the charge.
Earlier this month, a Moscow court sentenced Navalny to two years and eight months in prison for violating the terms of his probation while recovering in Germany. The sentence stems from a 2014 conviction for embezzlement that Navalny rejected as fabricated and the European court found illegal.
In Tuesday’s decision, the ECHR pointed to Rule 39 of its regulations and forced the Russian government to release Navalny, citing “the nature and extent of the risk to the applicant’s life”.
“This measure will be applied with immediate effect,” said the Strasbourg court in a statement.
The court noted that Navalny contested the Russian authorities’ argument that they had taken sufficient measures to safeguard his life and well-being in custody after the attack by the nervous agent.
Russian Justice Minister Konstantin Chuichenko dismissed the court’s decision as “clear and gross interference” in Russia’s judicial system.
“This demand is unfounded and illegal because it does not indicate a single fact or legal rule that would allow the court to deliver such a verdict,” said Chuichenko in a statement released by Russian news agencies. “This demand cannot be met because there is no legal reason for that person to be released from custody under Russian law. Aware of this, European judges clearly made a political decision that could only aggravate the restoration of constructive relations with the institutions of the Council of Europe. “
In the past, Moscow followed the ECHR’s decisions by awarding damages to Russian citizens who challenged verdicts in Russian courts, but never faced a demand from the European court to release a convict.
As a reflection of its latent irritation with the European court’s verdicts, Russia last year adopted a constitutional amendment declaring the priority of national law over international law. Russian authorities can now use this provision to reject the ECHR’s decision.
Mikhail Yemelyanov, deputy head of the legal affairs committee in the Kremlin-controlled parliament’s lower house, noted the constitutional change, noting that it gives Russia the right to ignore the ECHR decision, according to the Interfax news agency.
But Navalny’s chief strategist, Leonid Volkov, argued that Russia’s participation in the Council of Europe forces it to comply with the court’s decision. He warned on Facebook that the country is in danger of losing its participation in the main human rights organization on the continent if it does not comply with the order.
Navalny’s arrest and imprisonment fueled a wave of protests across Russia. The authorities responded with strong repression, detaining about 11,000 people, many of whom were fined or sentenced to prison terms ranging from seven to 15 days.
Russia has rejected Western criticism of Navalny’s arrest and the crackdown on demonstrations as meddling in its internal affairs.
In televised comments, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denounced the ECHR decision as a blow to international law and “part of a campaign to put pressure on our country and meddle in internal affairs of our country”.
A hearing on Navalny’s appeal of his sentence is scheduled for Saturday.
He also faced lawsuits in a separate case on charges of defaming a World War II veteran. Navalny, who called the 94-year-old veteran and others featured in a pro-Kremlin video “corrupt puppets”, “people without conscience” and “traitors”, dismissed the allegations of slander and described them as part of official efforts to downplay it.
With his usual sardonic humor, Navalny compared his conditions in the Matrosskaya Tishina maximum security prison in Moscow to the isolation of a space traveler.
“Uniformed people who come to me say only a few stereotyped phrases, a light indicating a working video camera is seen on their chests – they look like androids,” he said in comments posted on Instagram. “And just like in a film about space travel, the ship’s command center communicates with me. A voice over the intercom said: ‘3-0-2, get ready for health treatment’. And I would say, ‘OK, just give me 10 minutes to finish my tea’ ”.