Russia Issues Warrant for Arrest of Alexei Navalny’s Brother Days After Opposition Leader’s Suspicious Death

Isaac SchorrFeb 20th, 2024, 2:09 pm
 
Navalny

AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, File.

Russian authorities have issued a warrant for the arrest of  the late Alexei Navalny’s brother, Oleg Navalny, just four days after the opposition leader died under suspicious circumstances in a Russian prison last Friday.

The article from the state-controlled Russian news agency TASS announcing the warrant provided few details, noting only that the Russian Interior Ministry had announced that he was “wanted under an article of the Criminal Code.”

Navalny had previously been convicted for helping to organize unauthorized protests against Covid restrictions and was given a one-year suspended sentence for the crime.

“The Federal Penitentiary Service asked the court to replace his [one year] suspended sentence with a real one, citing Navalny’s refusal to comply with the restrictions imposed by the court ruling,” according to TASS. “He was put on the wanted list in January 2022 after the penitentiary service reported that Navalny was not checking in with probation officers after the sentence.”

Prior to his death last week, Alexei Navalny had been been poisoned at the direction of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin back in 2020. He nevertheless returned to his homeland the following year, where he was swiftly taken into custody.

In a recent video of Lyudmila Navalnaya, the mother of the deceased human rights activist and fugitive said that she had not been granted the opportunity to see her son’s body and had “not even been told where he is.”

“I appeal to you, Vladimir Putin, the solution of [this] problem depends solely on on you,” she said.

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