Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny jailed for 30 days
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Russian state prosecutors have jailed Alexei Navalny for 30 days, as the Kremlin critic appeared in front of a hearing he labelled as "the highest degree of lawlessness" on Monday (January 18).
Navalny was detained the previous evening at a Moscow airport when flying home for the first time since he was poisoned last summer.
In a video posted on social media from inside the police station, Navalny also hit out at President Vladimir Putin.
“I have seen a lot of times the mockery of justice, but it looks like the old man in his bunker is so scared of everything, that the criminal procedures' code has been blatantly torn up and thrown into the garbage. The thing which is happening here is simply impossible. This is the highest degree of lawlessness.”
Upon the announcement of Navalny's remand in pre-trail detention, he urged the people to take to the streets.
Around 200 of his supporters gathered outside the police station in temperatures of minus 18 degrees Celsius and demanded he be set free, a Reuters witness said.
The foreign ministers of Germany, Britain, France, and Italy had earlier called for Navalny's release, while the U.N. human rights office said it was "deeply troubled" by his arrest.
One of U.S. President-elect Joe Biden's top aides Jake Sullivan also joined the calls for Moscow to free Navalny.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov brushed off any criticism of the actions damaging Russia's image, saying the country isn't just "young ladies going to a ball."
“You can feel the joy of their carbon-copy comments. Joy, because it (Navalny returning) apparently help the Westerns politicians to think that they now can distract (their citizens) from the deepest crisis the liberal system has found themselves in."
The head of Cinema for Peace, the activist group that brought Alexei Navalny to Germany for life-saving treatment after his poisoning has also spoken out.
Jaka Bizilj simply called it a "crime" that Russia had detained the Kremlin critic on his return to Russia.
