Journalist who covered Navalny’s trials is jailed in Moscow on charges of extremism

Journalist who covered Navalny’s trials is jailed in Moscow on charges of extremism

Antonina Favorskaya, additionally recognized by courtroom officers as Antonina Kravtsova, was arrested earlier in March. On Friday, Moscow’s Basmanny District Court ordered that she stay in pre-trial detention at the least till May 28.

The listening to was carried out behind closed doorways on the request of the investigators, which was supported by the presiding choose.

Antonina Favorskaya is escorted by a police officer to the courtroom in the Basmanny District Court in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 29, 2024.
Antonina Favorskaya is escorted by a police officer to the courtroom within the Basmanny District Court in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Dmitry Serebryakov)

Favorskaya and her lawyer protested the choice, the unbiased news website Mediazona reported.

“I am completely against a closed process. The press needs to know what’s going on here, what I’m being accused of,” the outlet quoted Favorskaya as saying.

She is accused of accumulating materials, producing and modifying movies and publications for Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption, which had been outlawed as extremist by Russian authorities, in line with courtroom officers.

She has been charged with involvement with an extremist group, a felony offence punishable by as much as six years in jail.

Favorskaya was initially detained on March 17 after laying flowers on Navalny’s grave.

She spent 10 days in jail after being accused of disobedience towards the police, however when that interval of detention ended, authorities charged her once more and ordered her to seem in courtroom Friday, in line with OVD-Info, a Russian human rights group.

Antonina Favorskaya stands in a glass cage in a courtroom in the Basmanny District Court in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 29, 2024.
Antonina Favorskaya stands in a glass cage in a courtroom within the Basmanny District Court in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Dmitry Serebryakov)

Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokeswoman, stated that Favorskaya didn’t publish something on the Foundation’s platforms and prompt that Russian authorities have focused her as a result of she was doing her job as a journalist.

“Even if we discard the falsity of the accusation, its essence remains — the journalist is accused of journalistic activity,” Yarmysh wrote on X, previously often known as Twitter.

Navalny died in an Arctic penal colony in February. Favorskaya lined Navalny’s courtroom hearings for years, in addition to trials of different Kremlin critics swept up in a relentless authorities clampdown.

She was one in all six journalists detained throughout Russia this month, media freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders stated on Thursday.

Antonina Favorskaya stands in a glass cage in a courtroom in the Basmanny District Court in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 29, 2024.
Antonina Favorskaya stands in a glass cage in a courtroom within the Basmanny District Court in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Dmitry Serebryakov)

Favorskaya is one in all a number of Russian journalists focused by authorities as a part of the crackdown on dissent in Russia, aimed toward opposition figures, journalists, activists and members of the LGBTQ+ group.

Her jailing by the courtroom got here on the primary anniversary of the arrest of Evan Gershkovich, a 32-year-old reporter for The Wall Street Journal who’s awaiting trial in Moscow’s infamous Lefortovo Prison on espionage prices, which he and his employer have vehemently denied.

The US authorities has declared Gershkovich wrongfully detained, with officers accusing Moscow of utilizing the journalist as a pawn for political ends.

Source: www.9news.com.au