Alexei Navalny – The trial of Navalny: day five

Today was the fifth day of the trial of Navalny. Despite the fact that the prosecutor’s office yesterday threatened to finish presenting its position, today they resumed the questioning of witnesses.

There were two of them, and both were bailiffs from a libel trial against a veteran. These were the most impetuous interrogations of all – both witnesses stated that they did not remember anything at all. The first one literally refused to testify, citing unconsciousness. He could hardly even remember in what process he saw Navalny and what the veteran had to do with it.

The ability of the Investigative Committee and the prosecutor’s office to drag such witnesses to court is already beginning to arouse a kind of admiration. It seems that the prosecution specifically invites people who cannot support its position in any way. Maybe this is an insidious plan to ruin the criminal case from the inside, but most likely this is just extra evidence: this case was invented from beginning to end, there is nothing that could confirm the charge.

Then the prosecutor again began to read out the materials of the case. Today’s part was devoted to the recognition of the FBK as an extremist organization. It would seem – what does extremism have to do with it, after all, this is a criminal case about fraud? I’ll explain now. The prosecution cannot prove that Navalny, calling for donating money to the FBK to fight corruption, spent it on himself. Although they read account statements in court, there is no connection between Alexei’s spending and donations to the FBK, and they know it. But the prosecutor’s office needs to somehow confirm the fact of theft. To say that Navalny called for donating money to fight corruption, but he deceived everyone and spent it on something else. So they came up with extremism. Allegedly, people supported Alexei so that he would engage in legal activities – and he was engaged in illegal ones. He called for the overthrow of the government. Arranged illegal rallies. Destroyed the elections.

The prosecutor said so in court today: the FBK posed a threat to the state.

The author of this entire extremist case is Moscow Prosecutor Denis Popov. We did about him investigation. He is a typical corrupt official – with a meager official salary, he owns a hotel in Montenegro and a villa in Spain, but, of course, does not declare them. And today, in court, Alexei directly said so: the Moscow prosecutor is a swindler and a thief.

Prosecutor Natalia Tikhonova almost had a heart attack. She, as the media write, began to scream that Navalny had no right to call people crooks without a corresponding court decision. Alexei smiled and said that he would call a spade a spade. The judge, too, was frightened and began to threaten that she would now remove Alexei from the hall – to which he offered to do so, just do not forget that they are all now in prison, so there is nowhere to go.

For the rest of the day, the prosecutor continued to read the materials of the case – protocols for viewing videos and screenshots from social networks. For example, they looked at Navalny’s Instagram, which contains impenetrable, according to the prosecutor’s office, evidence of fraud – photos from a vacation. I note that for studying Navalny’s public, open Instagram and searching for evidence there, someone in the UK receives money.

Meetings will resume next week. We will continue to talk about them. Subscribe to our channel and help us spread these videos.